Health insurance in the U.S. comes from many different public and private sources. This talk will consider how the coronavirus has illuminated the weaknesses (and one surprising strength) of our decentralized approach to courage.

Dr. Helen Levy is a Research Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy; she is also a Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research and the Ford School of Public Policy. She is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Before coming to the University of Michigan she was an Assistant Professor at the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2010 - 2011, Dr. Levy served as a Senior Economist to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, DC.

Dr. Levy’s research interests include the causes and consequences of lacking health insurance, evaluation of public health insurance programs, and the role of health literacy in explaining disparities in health outcomes. She is a co-Investigator on the Health and Retirement Study, a long-running longitudinal study of health and economic dynamics at older ages. She is currently the recipient of a Career Development Award from the National Institute on Aging to study health literacy and health disparities among the elderly.

This is the first of five lectures to be presented once each month from February through June of 2022. A new series will start in September 2022.The next lecture in the current series will take place March 8, 2022.The title is: The Dagger in the Heart of Christianity. Learn from well-known experts about an array of interesting subjects, with an interactive Q&A period following each lecture.

Preregistration is required via the OLLI website or phone. A link to access the lecture will be e-mailed to you approximately one week prior to the first session.