Timothy Jost on Health Care Reform

Washington and Lee University law professor Timothy Jost, who has written extensively on issues of health care and health law, believes that the longer Congress takes to produce health care legislation, the more likely it will be that history repeats itself. He says the initiative could go the way of the ill-fated 1994 Clinton Health Security Act, which was killed by Congressional delay.

"We've gone for a generation since [the Clinton plan failed] with more and more people uninsured," Jost said. "Health care has become dramatically more expensive. If we don't get it done in the next couple of months, we may very well not get it done. And I think, in this instance, that's going to be a disaster."

Jost said that without health care reform of some sort, millions more people will be uninsured, and health care costs will continue to climb to unsustainable rates.

Jost is the author of a new article published by Health Affairs, the leading journal of health policy, on how the interplay between federal and state health care regulations could affect reform efforts.

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