[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 6, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E122]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E122]]


 IN MEMORY OF MILTON ROEMER--ONE OF THE WORLD'S LEADING PUBLIC HEALTH 
                  ADVOCATES AND HEALTH POLICY THINKERS

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. FORTNEY PETE STARK

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 6, 2001

  Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, one of the world's most thoughtful health 
policy experts and advocates, Dr. Milton L. Roemer has passed away. His 
brillance and insights will be sorely missed by all those who were his 
students and who had the privilege of working with him.
  Few of us in Congress ever get a law named after us, and even fewer 
people throughout the world get a law of nature or science named after 
themselves--but Roemer's law is a law that all of us in health policy 
and finance must live and deal with daily. In popular language, 
Roemer's law is ``build it and they will come''--which he postulated 
way before the movie was ever dreamed of. In health policy, it means 
that in an insured population, if you add beds to a health care 
facility, they will get filled. In medicine and health care, supply can 
drive demand. The implications for health policy, costs, and financing 
are key to many of the problems we face and will be facing in the 
decades to come.
  Roemer's law is just one of the innumerable contributions he gave the 
world. Since earning his medical degree 60 years ago, he worked on 
public health problems in 71 nations, published as sole author 20 
books[!!], co-authored 12 other books, and 430 articles. The doctor was 
obviously possessed of energy and talent almost beyond imagination.
  Dr. Roemer earned the MD degree from New York University in 1940, 
along with a masters' degree in sociology from Cornell University in 
1939, and a public health degree from the University of Michigan in 
1943.
  As a medical officer of the New Jersey State Health Department, he 
supervised 92 venereal disease clinics, as they were called in 1943. 
During World War II as a member of the commissioned corps of the US 
Public Health Service, he served as Assistant to the Chief Medical 
Officer of the War Food Administration and Associate in Medical Care 
Administration to the Chief of the State Relations Division. His 1948 
book, written with F.D. Mott Rural Health and Medical Care was the 
first to analyze systematically rural health care needs and services in 
the United States.
  As county health officer of Monoghela County, West Virginia, he 
introduced public health innovations, including pioneering a cancer 
detection clinic, for this mining community, against the objections of 
organized medicine. Dr. Roemer explained to the doctors that this 
screening clinic would provide more patients for them to treat. This 
experience led him later to establish a prize for a creative, local 
public health leader who had overcome opposition to advances in public 
health. He early called for the integration of public health and 
medical care and launched the Medical Care Section of the American 
Public Health Association.
  Dr. Roemer's international work began in 1951 when he served as chief 
of the Social and Occupational Health Section of the newly formed World 
Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1953, in the midst 
of the McCarthy hysteria, he was forced to leave Switzerland and his 
work as an international civil servant, when the US government withdrew 
approval of his appointment at WHO.
  In 1953 the Province of Saskatchewan, Canada, had just introduced 
hospital insurance for its people in this prairie province and was on 
the verge of extending it to include insurance for doctors' care Dr. 
Roemer was appointed Director of Medical and Hospital Services of the 
Saskatchewan Department of Public Health, North America's first social 
insurance program for hospital care.
  After teaching at Yale and Cornell Universities, in 1962, Dr. Roemer 
came to the UCLA School of Public Health, where he taught health 
administration for 38 years and served as chairman of the Department of 
Health Services for eight years. The capstone of Dr. Roemer's many 
publications was his 2-volume work, National Health Systems of the 
World, a monumental, comparative analysis of national health systems of 
countries of the world set within a logical and coherent framework.
  At UCLA, Dr. Roemer's research encouraged the development of not for 
profit HMOs, promoted the use of ambulatory care, and documented the 
need for a national health insurance covering the total population. He 
advocated the development of doctoral training in health administration 
to prepare students for leadership in public health practice and 
established an endowed fellowship to support students in this program.
  The American Public Health Association awarded Dr. Roemer its 
International Award for Excellence in Promoting and Protecting the 
Health of People in 1977. In 1983, APHA awarded him its highest honor--
the Sedgwick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health. 
In 1992, the Centers for Disease Control gave Dr. Roemer its Joseph W. 
Mountain Award. In 1997, he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of 
the APHA International Health Section and the Distinguished Career 
Award of the Association for Health Services Research.
  Dr. Roemer is survived by his wife of 61 years, Ruth Roemer, his son, 
John E. Roemer, of New York City, his daughter, Beth Roemer Lewis, of 
Berkeley, California; and six grandchildren.
  A memorial service will be held at UCLA in the spring. Contributions 
in Milton Roemer's memory may be made to the American Public Health 
Association, Washington, DC, the Department of Health Services, UCLA 
School of Public Health, or Physicians for Social Responsibility.
  To repeat, America and the world have lost a wonderful teacher who 
truly had a sense of the whole and of the oneness of mankind--and that 
a just and honorable society should join in helping ensure that no 
member of that society goes without health care.

                          ____________________