Health care reform divide grows deeper

Insuring Resources Commentary

I attended the Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner's Health Insurance Advisory Committee yesterday where we received an update on health care reform from the Nat'l Assoc. of Insurance Commissioners. I am an appointed member of the committee.

With the Massachusetts Senate victory by the GOP last night the next two weeks will define what happens with health care reform. The legislative options depicted by NAIC were not pretty and we'll see if they can compromise to improve U.S. health care. The Democrats need a Republican to pass it and that's unlikely. Hopefully they get past the rhetoric and enact true bipartisan reform that focuses on quality and efficiency while ending pre-exisitng condition exclusions and covering the majority of the uninsured.

Its ironic, for me anyway, that at the same OCI meeting we also heard an update from WHIO--- the Wisconsin Health Information Organization http://www.wisconsinhealthinfo.org/. They have established a database of 7.3 million episodes of care for 1.5 million Wisconsinites from their insurer, provider and employer health care purchasing partners. As you've heard me say before, episodes of care reimbursement is how we should reform U.S. health care to emphasize quality and efficiency and create true cost competition on both the health care and health insurance sides of the equation. Through the WHIO database providers quality and efficiency can be compared against their peers and national standards to improve health outcomes and efficiency.

I've attached the article below as it illustrates the health care debate specifically in Wisconsin and the impact of Tea Party's and the anti-gov't backlash of doing health care reform incorrectly.

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From the Jan. 19th Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jeff Uhlir, an accountant from Manitowoc, opposes the health care reform legislation making its way through Congress and wants more competition among private insurers to drive down costs.

"I think Americans, given the opportunity and freedom, will get their own health insurance," said Uhlir, who recently attended a tea party rally.

Barbara Aho, a self-employed landscape designer from Milwaukee, wants health care reform and wants it now.

"I don't know any health insurance company that has gone broke," she said.

The fight over health care has divided the country for nearly a year, and rather than losing steam, it appears to be reaching a fever pitch locally and nationally.

In Wisconsin, several thousand people turned out Saturday for an anti-tax "tea party" rally in Racine County. People in the movement oppose key planks of the Obama agenda, including health care reform.

And U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat, has been getting blistered at recent listening sessions, which he holds regularly across the state. Last week, a standing-room-only crowd at Waukesha County Technical College in Pewaukee, a Republican stronghold, overwhelmingly opposed Obama's health care effort. They questioned in particular how Feingold could champion transparency in government while negotiations on the health care legislation continue behind closed doors. Several in the crowd told Feingold that if he voted for the health care bill, he should be voted out of office. Feingold faces re-election in the fall.

Tuesday, Feingold was on Democratic home turf, holding a listening session at Washington High School in Milwaukee. The crowd there was more supportive of health care reform. If anything, several of the speakers voiced displeasure that Democrats didn't go further in the legislation by introducing a so-called public option, allowing people to buy health insurance from the government.

"I'm not surprised by the Milwaukee meeting being more favorable toward the president's plan and the Waukesha meeting being less favorable," Feingold told reporters. "I wouldn't know much about Wisconsin if I didn't know that."

Nevertheless, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Menomonee Falls put in a total of 25 town hall meetings and office hour events during the recent long holiday weekend, and said people are angrier than ever over health care legislation. Compared with the comments he heard in September and October, "these were more heated, more emphatic and more concerned" as a possible final vote looms while people become more familiar with what is in the bill, he said. Sensenbrenner said people are particularly angry about the sweet deals certain lawmakers were able to carve out for their own states, such as an exemption that would allow Florida seniors to keep their Medicare Advantage plans.

Even "the few people who spoke up in favor of the bill said it had its problems," he said.

Regarding the feedback Feingold has been getting at town hall meetings, Sensenbrenner said: "I don't think he had a good two weeks."
2010 midterm impact

Even if the Democrats do get their reform bill through Congress - and to President Barack Obama's desk for signature - the issue will likely continue to resonate with the public all the way to the 2010 midterm elections.

The bill's opponents have criticized everything from what's in the bill to how it was created to the fact it was passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve. The bill's supporters have said the reform measure will insure up to 30 million people who don't currently have insurance.

And get this: According to a Jan. 8-10 Gallup survey, Americans want their member of Congress to vote for health care legislation by a margin of 49% to 46%. Yet a recent Pew Center survey found 39% favored the health care bills before Congress while 49% opposed them.

"If you think all of those people that say they don't want the bill, are people that don't want health reform - there's a good chunk of them who want a much stronger bill," Feingold said. "I think the largest group is probably the people that are for the bill. The second largest group is the people that are against the bill because they don't think they want to do anything. And then there is a third group, which is significant because they want a stronger bill."

Feingold supported the Senate version of the bill, which he said "is a reasonable compromise. It is not a government takeover of health care."

Candice Owley, a local labor leader and former nurse from Milwaukee, said two of her sons are in the restaurant business, and only one of them has health care.

"People's lives are on the line," she said later, explaining why she supported reform legislation. "We have to get moving and get the bill passed."

But Lynne Wallis, a saleswoman from Whitefish Bay, told Feingold that she supported him in previous Senate races but won't back him this fall because of his support for the Senate health care bill.

"The government does not belong in health care," she said.

Feingold responded that Medicare and the health system for veterans are government programs.

Later, Wallis said that if a vote of the American people were taken now, the reform bill "would not pass."

The next closest thing may have happened Tuesday in Massachusetts. Republican Scott Brown defeated Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election to fill the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy. Brown, who opposes the reform legislation, will become the Republicans' 41st senator, smashing the Democrats' filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.

That could change everything, and give added fuel to the opposition.

"I can't go grocery shopping or fill up my gas tank without my neighbors asking how we can stop this train wreck and encouraging me to keep up the fight against this," Rep. Paul Ryan of Janesville said in a statement. "These aren't just Republicans. Independents and Democrats even are fed up with Washington, sick of being shut out of the process, and genuinely worried with just how quickly the federal government is encroaching into their lives."