By Noelle Hunter, staff writer, The Morehead (Ky.) News
Former President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter welcomed AHCJ back to Atlanta for the first time in 11 years during Thursday night’s kickoff session, “A Conversation with the Carters.”
The founders of the Carter Center sat down with independent journalist and former AHCJ president Andrew Holtz and more than 300 conference attendees for a candid discussion of mental health parity in the United States and disease eradication in developing nations.
“The most exciting thing in our life right now is the approaching demise of the last guinea worm that will ever live on earth,” the former president said.
He told Health Journalism 2012 attendees that the Carter Center works with local and national leaders in developing nations to eradicate preventable diseases. Carter recalled the first time he encountered the “horrible affliction” that’s been around for millennia, but exists now only in remote areas of Africa and Asia.
“In a little village in Ghana, 300 of the 500 residents had guinea worms coming out of their bodies,” Carter said.
Since then, the guinea worm eradication program, funded through the Carter Center, has eliminated the disease in 20 of 21 African countries. Efforts to complete eradication in South Sudan have been stymied by internal conflict. He said local journalists in those countries were essential to spread news about efforts to eradicate the pestilence.
The former president said health care has always been a priority for the Carter Center, and represents 85 percent of its $100 million annual budget. Mental health also is high on that priority list, Rosalynn Carter said.
The former first lady is a long-time advocate for mental health, and said the Mental Health Parity Act, which passed in 2008 but stalled in the White House, would improve access and funding for mental health services in community settings. She encouraged journalists to write more often on the subject, especially on a trend in integration of primary and mental health care services in community health centers, as well as stories that reduce the enduring stigma surrounding mental illness.
Holtz asked Rosalynn Carter what she believed to be the impediment to Parity Act implementation.
“Insurance companies,” she replied.
The former president and first lady said the Affordable Care Act would strengthen mental health treatment and services in the nation, but Jimmy Carter said he wasn’t confident that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule in favor of the Act. He said a better question is “What will happen to the 31 million Americans with no health insurance if it’s struck down?”
Carter said he said he preferred the Medicare-style single-payer plan that President Barak Obama proposed during his election campaign. He lauded the president’s attempt, but said it falls far short of the goal of realizing health care for every American.
“It would have been much simpler to take what Medicare does now and expand it step by step to apply to all age groups,” he said.
“Expanded Medicare would help the whole country,” the former president said.
