Attendees at White House forum voice health care reform ideas
By Jay Greene
Crain’s Detroit Business
Mar. 12, 2009
Reducing costs and improving health care quality through comprehensive reform can make the struggling Detroit 3 auto industry more competitive with foreign companies, said several speakers Thursday at a White House health care reform forum in Dearborn.
Health care costs add $1,200 to $1,600 to the price of every car made in Detroit, making reform a competitive necessity, said Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who helped moderate the two-hour forum held at the Ford Conference and Event Center.
The forum — the first of five to be held nationally over the next month — was also led by Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle and Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council.
“We spend far more in the U.S. for health care than any other country and we have lower outcomes,” Granholm said. “Health care is an issue that we must address if we want to compete globally.”
More than 25 attendees spoke about their own experiences with the health care system or to express suggestions on how to improve the health care delivery system.
Absent from the discussion, however, was how to pay for expanding access and making health care insurance more affordable.
Barnes said savings can come from adopting electronic medical records, reducing costly chronic diseases through early detection with prevention and wellness programs, and using evidence-based medical treatments.
Congressmen John Dingell Jr., D-Dearborn, and John Conyers, D-Detroit, agreed reforming the health care industry is long overdue.
Conyers, who has introduced single-payer legislation, H.R. 676, said improving access to care is complex, “but not as hard as people may think.”
Dingell, who said his father introduced the nation’s first health care reform plan in 1948, said “health care is a right, not a privilege.”
Dr. Jim Mitchiner, an emergency physician from Clawson who supports a single-payer system, said health care insurance should not be linked to a job that can be lost or taken away.
“I see people every day who have lost their job and have no insurance. It makes no sense. You lose a job and they don’t take away your life or auto insurance policy,” Mitchiner said. “I have lost complete faith in the private insurance industry.”
Under single-payer, private insurance companies would be abolished and health care would be financed through the government. The private delivery system of hospitals, doctors and other providers would be maintained.
Addressing the half dozen people who also spoke out in favor of a single-payer system, Barnes said President Barack Obama wants to reach a pragmatic solution to health care reform, one that can be achieved this year.
“The president believes we need to be building on our current health care system (that maintains the current private health insurance industry),” Barnes said. “It is the most expeditious way to go.”
But Barnes said if Obama could create a health care system from scratch, the president would go with a single-payer system.
“We believe in the employer-based system, but we need a public-private partnership,” said Dan Loepp, CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
Unlike 15 years ago when the insurance industry strongly opposed President Clinton’s effort to reform health care, Loepp said the industry now favors reform.
“We support guarantee issue with an individual mandate (to be covered with health insurance),” Loepp said.
But illustrating one of the flaws in the current health insurance system, Adrian Campbell-Montgomery, a mother of two, described how Blue Cross in 2004 denied payment to a Southeast Michigan hospital where she was treated for cancer.
“I was 22-years-old and needed surgery. I got a bill for $8,000 that I couldn’t pay,” Campbell-Montgomery said. “Blue Cross denied payment because there were recommendations you needed to be 26 years or older for that kind of surgery.”
Two weeks ago, Campbell-Montgomery received more bad news. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
“I already owe $10,000 for that. I am trying to get Medicaid. Where does this end? You have to stop denying people,” she said.
Sister Mary Ellen Howard, executive director of the Cabrini Clinic in Detroit, asked who in the audience is going to help Campbell-Montgomery. Cabrini is the nation’s oldest free clinic.
“I am mad. Who is going to help her? Mr. Loepp?” Howard said. “People are dying. We need to do something about it.”
Before Loepp could respond, however, Mike Duggan, CEO of Detroit Medical Center, offered to take care of Campbell-Montgomery.
“We will take care of you at DMC,” said Duggan, noting that up to 25 percent of the Medicaid recipients in Michigan receive some care at DMC.
“The system is crazy. Hospitals close in the city. It is more profitable to go elsewhere,” he said. “A lot of things need to be done to (reduce) costs.”
Ricardo Guzman, CEO of Community Health and Social Services Center in Detroit, said the five federally qualified health centers in Detroit need funds to rebuild their aging facilities. CHASS has three clinic locations.
“Our mission is to provide services to the uninsured and under-insured,” Guzman said. “We keep people out of the emergency department and we save insurers money. We need money for infrastructure. Our buildings are falling apart.”
Nurses should be at the table when the health care reform legislation is drafted, said Teresa Cervantez Thompson, dean of nursing and health at Madonna University in Livonia.
“Nursing should be the foundation of reform,” she said. “We need more coordination and case management of care.”