Daniel Dawes

Health Policy Lawyer Daniel Dawes Discussed the Secret Backstory of ObamaCare

On April 13, 2016, the Farquhar Honors College welcomed attorney Daniel E. Dawes, J.D., to Nova Southeastern University. Dawes spoke on campus as part of the college’s Distinguished Speakers Series.

Dawes is the executive director of health policy and external affairs at the Morehouse School of Medicine and a lecturer at Morehouse’s Satcher Health Leadership Institute and Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine. He founded and chaired the National Working Group on Health Disparities and Health Reform and is the cofounder of the Health Equity Leadership and Exchange Network.

An instrumental player in a large coalition of organizations that helped shape the Affordable Care Act (or ObamaCare), Dawes seeks to explain the law through a health equity lens, focusing on what it is intended to do and how it affects various groups. He is the author of the forthcoming book 150 Years of ObamaCare, which explores the secret backstory of the Affordable Care Act, shedding light on the creation and implementation of the greatest and most sweeping equalizer in the history of American health care. Offering an insider’s perspective, Dawes debunks contemporary understandings of health reform. His book also provides a comprehensive and unprecedented review of the health equity movement and the little-known leadership efforts crucial to passing public policies and laws reforming mental health, minority health, and universal health.

With insight into the efforts by the Obama administration, Congress, and external stakeholders, Dawes illuminates one of the most challenging legislative feats in the history of the United States. Ultimately, he argues that ObamaCare is much more comprehensive in the context of previous reform efforts than is typically understood.

Dawes is an NSU alumnus (B.S. in Psychology, B.S. in Business Administration). He earned his J.D. at the University of Nebraska College of Law.