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Forum spotlights health-care topics
by Chris Gautreau, THE ADVOCATE
Aug. 15, 2000

Not many solutions were found, but the problems were sorted out Monday at a Baton Rouge health-care forum hosted by two Louisiana congressmen and a nonpartisan Washington group.

Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge, who co-hosted the forum with Rep. John Cooksey, R-Monroe, said the four-hour event, along with more that he pledged to organize, would serve as a good starting point as Congress begins to reshape public-health policy.

"This will help educate folks about the scope of the problems and the challenges we face. Unless we make some basic structural changes, solutions are going to be very difficult," Baker said.

The forum, titled "Americans Discuss Health: Conversations in Louisiana," was attended by about 150 people, including interested residents, health-care providers, insurers and business interests. The Public Forum Institute, a nonpartisan Washington group that advocates public dialogue and debate on national issues, co-sponsored the event.

The forum subjects included panel discussions on the large number of Americans who forego health insurance and overhauling the Medicare and Social Security systems, as well as several presentations on the country's health system. During the panel discussions, participants frequently answered questions by saying they didn't know what the solution to specific problems should be. But Baker said the forum was meant to educate participants about the challenges Congress faces in finding solutions to looming crises within the country's health-care system. 

"I and no one else in Congress pretend for one minute that we can find solutions without input from all the players. Finding the answers is going to require input in some type of forum like this," he said.

In a panel discussion on the uninsured, consumer advocates, government regulators and hospital and small-business representatives were queried about the significant portion of Louisianians who go without health insurance.

The state has one of the nation's highest uninsured rates. According to 1998 estimates, 829,000 Louisiana residents - about 19.7 percent of the state's population - did not have health-care coverage. Several panelists said they did not know how to reduce the figure, but steps should be taken to ensure more people didn't lose coverage. Charles Hodson, director of the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, said small-business owners frequently bear a higher percentage of health-insurance costs for employees than larger firms. He recommended allowing small businesses to fully deduct health- insurance costs from their taxes and business associations to collectively bargain for coverage.

Panelist Patricia DeMichele was asked if the government should guarantee universal coverage.

"I don't know about universal coverage, but I think there should be universal access to health care," said DeMichele, head of the Louisiana Health Care Campaign, an advocate for consumer concerns in the health-care debate. "Unless you're very, very wealthy, you can't go out and buy health-care coverage on your own," she said.

In a separate presentation, Bobby Jindal, head of the University of Louisiana System, told attendees that spending more money does not necessarily improve public health-care programs.

Jindal, who reformed the state's Medicaid program during his tenure as head the state's Department of Health and Hospitals several years ago, said without the proper controls in place, public health- care programs will continue to be the target of fraud and waste. 

In another presentation, Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation outlined the looming crisis headed for the nation's Medicare and Social Security systems. Social Security runs at a surplus because more Americans pay into the system than those who receive benefits, Moffit said. Once the baby-boom generation begins retiring, the situation will be reversed, and the system could go into deficit as soon as 2015, he said. Unless changes are made, "we're going into an area of social problems where no society has ever gone before," he said.  Similar problems loom for the Medicare program, he said. Technological breakthroughs in medicine will create a dramatic increase in the demand for health- care services, he said.

When it reconvenes in the fall, Congress is poised to begin overhauling the nation's aging Medicare health-care program for seniors. Attempts at reform in recent years frequently dissolved into partisan bickering, but Baker said a sense of urgency surrounds Congress this fall. 

"The next session will be the health-care session," Baker said. Partisan disputes will continue about how best to make certain changes, "but this may be the one problem that cuts across partisanship."

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