American Forum

Anne Dunkelberg

Robert Restuccia

Medicaid’s federal and state partnership also protects Texas jobs. Clinics, doctors’ offices, hospitals and other health care businesses count on Medicaid for a dependable source of revenue that supports local jobs.

But Congress is considering proposals that put our families, friends, neighbors and local jobs at risk. Making Medicaid a fixed pot of money that doesn’t grow with need -- commonly referred to as a block grant -- or imposing an unrealistic health care spending cap would set arbitrary limits on federal Medicaid investments.

These proposals do nothing to bring down health care costs. Instead, they just shift costs from the federal government to states, and then on to taxpayers, families and charities. They leave states few choices. States can cut off coverage and make kids, seniors, families and people with disabilities uninsured, which is proven to raise premiums for everyone who has insurance and drives up costs when the uninsured are forced to seek expensive emergency room care.

They can cut payments to doctors’ offices, hospitals and nursing homes, but this puts care and jobs at risk. Congress shifting costs to states is just like an employer shifting more of the premium to the worker. Neither really reforms health care costs, they only push the costs to someone else. Either way, we pay.

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TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM

By Raymond H. Feierabend, MD

It’s no secret that the individual mandate is one of the most unpopular and controversial aspects of the new health care reform law.

It’s being challenged legislatively in the Tennessee General Assembly, and legally through lawsuits such as the one recently ruled on in Virginia. Two thirds of Americans say they would like to see a repeal of that provision of the law. Yet, seven in 10 Americans favor restrictions on insurance companies’ ability to deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions and to rescind coverage when individuals become ill. Unfortunately, as long as our health care system is based largely on the private insurance industry, we can’t have one without the other.

Politically, passage of comprehensive health care reform would not have been possible with active opposition from the industry. Repeal of the individual mandate alone at this time would be vigorously opposed by health insurers and most health care providers, including hospitals and large health care systems.


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AMERICAN FORUM

By Jennifer S. Smith, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Kristen Forbes of Noblesville, Indiana, had recently graduated from college when she was diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer at age 22. After a yearlong, painful battle, she succumbed to the disease, leaving behind a bright future and grieving family members and friends.

Like most of the 4,000 women in the United States who die of cervical cancer each year, Kristen’s death was preventable. We now have the medical know-how and the tools to stamp out this major cancer once and for all. What we need now, as our country honors National Cervical Cancer Awareness Month this January, is the will among members of the public health community – government officials and policymakers, medical professionals, insurers, women and others – to make it happen.

Cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. With widespread use of Pap test screening in the last 50 years, cervical cancer rates have declined significantly, but have leveled to about 12,000 cases each year. This disease should be relatively easy to prevent. We know it’s caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a common sexually transmitted infection. Most HPV infections go away on their own, but persistent HPV infections can lead to cell changes that can progress to cervical cancer. Fortunately, with proper treatment, the disease can usually be stopped before cancer develops.

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MISSOURI FORUM

By Dr. Stephen Radinsky

As a retired radiologist, I will never forget the day when I had to tell a woman that her free mammogram, provided through a state initiative, had shown that she had breast cancer. I began telling her about the next steps in diagnosis and treatment and she interrupted me, saying, "You don't understand, I don't have health insurance. I can't afford any of this."

I have spent years wondering what happened to that woman. With the health reform legislation just enacted by Congress, scenarios like this will disappear.

Our healthcare system has been broken for many years. One of the major problems in reforming the system was due to the unwillingness of the insurance companies to compromise. The insurance systems had a virtual monopoly in every state and were unwilling to sell insurance across state lines. Thus, the insurance companies made huge amounts of money. Last year, the CEO of United Healthcare made $1.6 billion in stock options alone. Several years ago, a Blue Cross Blue Shield CEO had a salary and bonus of $337.5 million.

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GEORGIA FORUM

By Timothy Sweeney and Alan Essig

For more than a year, federal efforts at reforming the nation’s health insurance system have been controversial to say the least. Now that the president has signed health reform into law, the partisan debate should come to an end.

It is incumbent upon policymakers to begin planning for the implementation of the national reform law so that Georgians can benefit as much as possible from all its provisions.

Instead of working on implementing reform and focusing on the ways the reforms make needed improvements for Georgians, both with and without health insurance, state policymakers have continued their political rhetoric, misinformation, and exaggeration about its effect on Georgia.

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