Dueling speakers alternately called the federal health care bill a “financial disaster”  and a solution to the deficit  in a debate at the Harvard Medical School on Wednesday.

About 250 people attended the 2011 Hewitt Health Care Lecture hosted by The Pioneer Institute, a private Massachusetts research institute, which was structured as a debate addressing the issue of budgetary impacts of health care legislation and how to contain the costs on a national and state level.

Charles Baker, Republican candidate in 2010 Massachusetts’ gubernatorial election and member of the Pioneer Institute, moderated the questioning after the addresses from both debaters.

Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, gave the keynote address.

“[The health care bill] is a recipe for. . .financial disaster that endangers the economy and growth,” Holtz-Eakin said. “It is bad economic policy for a country in about a $1.6 trillion deficit, and in 10 years, we will still have a deficit and be on the way to a Third World death spiral. Other than that, I like it.”

Dr. Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the health care program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, countered his argument.

“In a world where we don’t know how to control the costs and it is not guaranteed, all we can do is try with the bill,” Gruber said. “It is not proven, but we will never know if we don’t try, and the bill takes the first steps to testing out the best ideas and learning.”

Holtz-Eakin said his suspicions of controlling costs emanated from an economy that needs to provide for eight million unemployed and a future where interest rates and taxes will continue to increase.

Although Holtz-Eakin said that the CBO will spend much more than $950 billion, Gruber said that the spending estimate is solid and that he has faith that the cost reductions in place will work out.

Executive director of the Pioneer Institute Jim Stergios said he is proud that the number one focus at the Institute remains education.

“Health care reform started [in Massachusetts,” Stergios said. “Talking about health care policy with all its empirical research provides a lot of lessons.