George Avery is an assistant professor of public health at Purdue University. In today’s Daily Caller, Avery rebuts claims that the Obama health plan would improve public health:

The idea that health care contributes significantly to population health is both intuitively appealing and untrue.…

In fact, federal “reform” often hurts the public health system. Both public health and health care experts have criticized Medicare and Medicaid, enacted by Congress in 1965, for changing the focus of health care practitioners from prevention to treatment.…

Requiring all Americans purchase health insurance, which the current bills hope to do, would not address the underlying socio-economic issues at the root of most public health problems.…

Indeed, access to health care can help individual patients, but can also aggravate some public health problems.… High rates of surgical intervention increase the risk and spread of drug resistant infections like MRSA.

Avery is the author of the Cato Institute briefing paper, “Scientific Misconduct: The Manipulation of Evidence for Political Advocacy in Health Care and Climate Policy.”