Safeguarding the Health of Katrina’s Victims

With New Orleans largely evacuated and hundreds of thousands of people separated from their regular health care providers, how will Hurricane Katrina’s evacuees attend to their health and health care needs?

How will state, federal and local governments coordinate to meet health needs? How will the health infrastructure in Louisiana and in states taking in those displaced adjust to their new burdens? How can federal programs assist those who have been displaced with their health care needs?

To help address these and related questions, the Alliance for Health Reform and the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured sponsored a September 12, 2005 briefing. Panelists were: Surgeon General Richard Carmona; Ray Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association; James Tallon, president of the United Hospital Fund in New York. Sen. William H. Frist, M.D., the Alliance vice chairman, joined the panel for quetions and answers, and moderated. Kaiser’s Diane Rowland and the Alliance’s Ed Howard also moderated.

Transcript

Full Transcript (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

Speaker Presentations

James Tallon Presentation (Adobe Acrobat PDF)