Richard D. Lamm

Richard D. Lamm is Co-Director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University of Denver, and the former three-term Governor of Colorado. (1975-1987) He is both a lawyer (Berkeley, 1961) and a Certified Public Accountant. He joined the faculty of the University of Denver in 1969 and has, except for his years as Governor, been associated with the University ever since.

Lamm was selected as one of Time Magazine's "200 Young Leaders of America" in 1974, and won the Christian Science Monitor "Peace 2020" essay in 1985. In 1992, he was honored by the Denver Post and Historic Denver, Inc. as one of the "Colorado 100" - people who made significant contributions to Colorado and made lasting impressions on the state's history. He was Chairman of the Pew Health Professions Commission and a public member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Lamm has appeared on virtually every national news program, including Buchanan & Press (MSNBC), Larry King Live and Inside Politics (CNN), Today (NBC), Meet the Press (NBC), ABC's Good Morning America, Lehrer NewsHour (PBS), and CBS's Face the Nation. His editorials have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, as well as in a number of academic and medical journals. While Governor, Lamm wrote or co-authored six books: A California Conspiracy, with Arnold Grossman (St. Martin's Press, 1988); Megatraumas: America in the Year 2000 (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985), The Immigration Time Bomb: The Fragmenting of America, with Gary Imhoff (Dutton and Company, 1985), 1988, with Arnie Grossman (St. Martin's Press, 1985), Pioneers & Politicians, with Duane A. Smith (Pruett Publishing Company, 1984) and The Angry West, with Michael McCarthy (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982).

Lamm has always been in the forefront of political change. As a first year legislator, he drafted and succeeded in passing the nation's first liberalized abortion law. He was an early leader of the environmental movement, and was President of the First National Conference on Population and The Environment. Reacting to the high cost of campaigning, he walked the state in his campaign for Governor of Colorado. Lamm was elected to three terms as Colorado's top elected official, and in serving as Governor from January 1975 and retiring in January 1987, he was the longest-serving Governor in Colorado's history to that date.

The Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University of Denver comprises the Public Affairs Program (Bachelor's in Public Affairs), the Graduate Program in Public Policy (Master's in Public Policy, MPP), and the Center for Public Policy and Contemporary Issues. In addition to directing the University of Denver's academic policy programs, the Institute for Public Policy Studies contributes to the study and discussion of American society's most critical issues through an active program of conferences, seminars, forums and publications.

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GOVERNOR LAMM STIRS CONTROVERSY
ABOUT PENDING LIMITS ON EXPECTED CARE
IN NEW BOOK THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF HEALTH CARE

Denver, CO (02/05/04) “Health care is a fiscal black hole into which we can pour all of our children’s future. Yet we are no healthier than many nations that spend far less,” says Governor Richard Lamm in his controversial new book THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF HEALTH CARE (Fulcrum Publishing). “Right now we have reached a critical point where there has to be a whole new moral vision for the entire health care system—not just for individual people.”

At the heart of the problem is a collision of expensive technology and changing demographics. The elderly are getting older as modern medicine performs its miracles. Compounding the increase in life expectancy and the sheer number of elderly is another demographic revolution taking place: the drop in the birthrate.

The impact of new health realities is pervasive throughout American life. The average American woman can expect to spend more years caring for her parents than she spent caring for her children. The largest purchase the average American family will make in their lifetime is no longer their house, but their health care. And health care costs are at the heart of most personal bankruptcies. “The health care system is consuming massive resources that are desperately needed in other parts of the economy if we are to leave our children a sustainable society,” says Lamm.

Doctors and scientists have developed the most technological, competent health care in all of history. But it is very expensive, too often substitutes technology for healthier strategies, and misses many Americans. Lamm believes widespread rationing is inevitable within the next 20 years. “Health care rationing will grow from the isolated exception to the general rule, especially for retiring baby boomers. But the United States already has the worst form of rationing—rationing by leaving people out of the system— that makes our system one of the most unethical in the world.”

“We cannot hope to solve the problems facing health care until we synchronize our social policy with our medical ethics,” says Lamm. To confront these new realities, Lamm proposes six essential elements of health care reform:

1. Providing access for all to a base level of health care.
2. Developing a means of limiting the use of procedures that are ineffective or marginally effective, or that are effective but too expensive.
3. Coming to a consensus on social and individual health care priorities.
4. Placing limitations on malpractice suits.
5. Controlling the health care bureaucracy.
6. Placing limitations on the supply side of health care.

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF HEALTH CARE is one of limits, rationing and denial to Americans of some of the health care they have come to expect. “We are going to have to have a candid dialog and set priorities on spending limits at the beginning of life, the end of life, and all points in between. No modern nation can build a health care system an individual at a time. The new questions in health care will not only be What do we need? but What can society afford? I hope this book makes Americans more aware of that.” Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm is well known for speaking out about issues that politicians find too controversial to address, including his often misinterpreted “Duty to Die” speech in 1984. He was also a presidential candidate for the Reform Party.

Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
Title: The Brave New World of Health Care
By Richard D. Lamm
ISBN 1-55591-510-8, $12.95, PB, 6 x 9, 132 pages
To Order: Call 800-992-2908 or visit www.fulcrum-books.com

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