Health care is a source of concern to most families and is certain to be a significant topic for debate during our 2008 general election campaign. The financing and delivery of health care services also form a significant part of our economy. Differences of opinion about our future course abound. Are we facing a crisis of either affordability or availability? How can we inform ourselves on this topic?
The goal of our Holland Lecture Series is to bring world-class information and insight to our community's discussion of globally important issues. Right now, few subjects are more timely than health care. Because of the critical importance of this topic, we are most fortunate to have the opportunity to bring Henry J. Aaron, Ph.D, an internationally known authority, to
Omaha
to share his insights with us. More information.
Henry Aaron is currently Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. In 1977 and 1978 he served as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He is a graduate of U.C.L.A and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the advisory committee of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the visiting committee of the Harvard Medical School.
A partial list of Dr. Aarons publications includes: Can We Say No: The Challenge of Health Care Rationing (with Melissa Cox); Coping With Methuselah: The Impact of Molecular Biology on Medicine and Society, (co-edited with William Schwartz); The Plight of Academic Medical Centers, Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate (with Robert Reischauer); The Painful Prescription: Rationing Hospital Care (co-authored with William Schwartz); Can America Afford to Grow Old?, (co-authored with Barry Bosworth and William Gale); and Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America's Health Care; Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (co-edited, with William Gale).
The Holland Lecture Series
The Holland Lectures address a variety of important ethical and global issues by bringing internationally recognized speakers to Omaha. These thought-provoking lectures provide a forum for the open discussion of sometimes controversial, but always provocative, ideas that might not otherwise be given voice in Nebraska. In the end, the lecture series aspires to challenge and broaden the listeners' understanding of ethics, philosophy, religion, and science as they relate to current national and world concerns.
First Unitarian Church has a long history of encouraging free and open discussion of controversial topics. For 10 years, between 1954 and 1964, the church was the home of the Frank R. Hoagland Lectures. As a young man, Dick Holland attended many of those lectures and discussed new ideas and ways of thinking that shaped his world perspective. His current desire to resurrect a speaker series and bring distinguished speakers to Omaha is rooted in his memories of attending those earlier presentations. Dick and Mary Holland believed that the Hoagland Lectures, which also brought well-known national figures to speak in Omaha, was an appropriate model for the new Holland Lecture Series that they established. In June 2006,
First
Unitarian
Church
and the Omaha
community
lost a very good friend with the passing of Mary Holland.
The sixth speaker in our popular Holland Lecture Series 