Local officials hope ill economy expedites health care reform
San Antonio Business Journal - by W. Scott Bailey
There could be one potentially huge upside to the current national economic crisis.
Some San Antonio health care and political leaders say the financial meltdown can be just the spark that is needed to ignite historic reform of the nation’s struggling health care system.
Pilar Oates is executive director of San Antonio’s Methodist Healthcare Ministries, a nonprofit organization that has improved access to health care for more Americans. She is among those who believe that the nation’s current fiscal woes will speed up efforts by president-elect Barack Obama to implement a new health care plan.
“Health care has been a shell game,” Oates contends. “But this financial crisis has provided a real wake-up call to a lot of people.”
University Health System (UHS) officials have worked for years to make state and federal lawmakers aware of their concerns, especially the impact from a growing number of uninsured and under-insured patients.
Could a seriously sick economy fuel action by lawmakers?
“We certainly hope so,” says UHS spokeswoman Leni Kirkman. “It is really impossible to consider solutions for the current economic crisis without taking into account its connection to the problem of the uninsured.”
As more people lose their jobs, Kirkman says, many lose their health insurance, too, further impacting the system.
UHS operates University Hospital, Bexar County’s safety-net facility.
Says Kirkman, “The nation’s ‘safety net’ for the uninsured is already so unstable. And, since Texas continues to lead the nation in terms of the percent of its population without health insurance, further growth in these numbers would be a very serious problem.”
Enormous opportunities
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff says without serious and timely health care reform, a growing number of small businesses are going to struggle to survive. Because of that, Wolff believes there is now a new sense of urgency.
“This economic crisis is going to put a tremendous pressure on Congress to do something,” Wolff says.
Oates says Dr. David Levy, principal of PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLPs’ health industries advisory practice, is “right on the money” when he asserts that this may be the opportune time for landmark health care reform.
“The financial crisis could accelerate health reform rather than be a roadblock to it,” says Levy in a statement tied to a new report from New York-based PriceWaterHouseCoopers’ (PWC) Health Research Institute.
“Right now,” Levy adds, “we have an historic opportunity to fix our broken health system as many forces converge ... and those forces could become unleashed by a new president who has pledged to make health care reform a priority of his administration.”
The PWC report is titled Healthcare Policy in an Obama Administration: Delivering on the Promise of Universal Coverage.
The report projects that the health care reform plan that Obama has proposed would cost the federal government $75 billion in year one, or the equivalent of $2,500 per newly insured person. But PWC also notes that the plan would extend health insurance coverage to 95 percent of all Americans, including two-thirds of those people who are currently uninsured.
According to the PWC report, of the 30 million Americans that would become newly insured under the Obama plan, nearly 40 percent would obtain coverage through their employers. And that, says PWC, would create a reversal in declining employer-based coverage.
Such reform won’t come cheap. PWC says full implementation of the Obama plan would grow in cost from about $75 billion in the first year to as much as $130 billion by 2018. The accumulative cost over 10 years, according to PWC, would surpass $1 trillion.
But PWC also notes that more than 13 million previously uninsured people would be able to obtain insurance coverage with the help of government subsidies through the Obama plan.
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