Dr. John Ghertner, MD

Medicare works for your parents, why not you?

It is time to encourage our elected officials in Washington to begin a serious open minded discussion about ways to improve our society’s health care system. We must implore them to listen to facts, ignore the lobbying noise from those who continue to profit inordinately from our damaged health care system and make a final decision that is practical, not ideological.

As a physician and nursing home operator in the Sodus and Williamson community for the last 30 years, I have become increasingly distressed with the state of the health care industry. I have witnessed first hand as insurance companies, physicians and hospitals have become part of a system that forces doctors to compromise patient care, institutions to disrupt the natural and needed patient advocacy role of primary care doctors and the growth of pharmaceutical companies who pay their way to billion dollar profits and misrepresent their products. Far too often the FDA protects the pharmaceutical industry and not us. Even editors of the major journals have made decisions first in the name of advertising income instead of the advancement of medical science.

The trouble that we are in is that by making health care a profit making business, those seeking profits make their profits by limiting their losses. In many ways, this quest for efficiency makes for innovation in health care. However, far more often, it results in cost cutting measures that slow down the delivery of services, limit certain valuable diagnostic procedures and drive up the cost of record keeping. We need to face the facts that this is not a partisan political problem. This problem is weakening our economy, taking money out of our pockets, forcing businesses to reduce benefits to workers, adding to poverty, and actually eroding the health of our people. In the United States, nearly one-third of every health care dollar is spent on private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork. Much of this could be eliminated with a single payer system.
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THE PRESIDENT: To Sir Edward Kennedy. (Applause.) That’s the kind of greeting a knight deserves. (Laughter.) It is thrilling to see you here, Teddy. We are so grateful for you taking the time to be here and the extraordinary work that your committee has already started to do, along with Mike Enzi; I know Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley on the Senate side; Henry, I know that you guys are gearing to go on the House side.

So I just want to, first of all, thank all of you for participating. Today was the first discussion in this effort, but it was not the last. In the coming days and weeks we’ll be convening a series of meetings with senior administration officials here at the White House to further explore some of the key issues that were raised today and to bring more voices into the conversation.

But my understanding is, is that we had an extraordinarily productive set of sessions throughout the day. And I’ve gotten a readout from some of the breakout groups and breakout sessions. And I just want to summarize a few things that my staff thought were notable and that I thought were notable and are worth mentioning before I start taking some questions or some comments.

First of all: A clear consensus that the need for health care reform is here and now. Senators Hatch, Enzi, Congressman Jim Cooper and many others agreed that we can do health care reform. Senator Hatch said that we needed leadership on both sides, and he believes that Democrats and Republicans need to put politics aside and work together to do it. Senator Whitehouse said this isn’t a “Harry and Louise” moment, it’s a “Thelma and Louise” moment. (Laughter.) We’re in the car headed toward the cliff and we must act.

Now, I just want to be clear — if you actually saw the movie, they did drive over the cliff. (Laughter.) So I just want to be clear that’s not our intention here. (Laughter.)

Insurers agree: Scott Serota with Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said to consider past opposition the past, it is not the present; the time is right for action now. The American Medical Association said that they are here to be partners and to help. Tom Donahue, with the Chamber of Commerce, said that in the previous debate we knew where everyone stood; people are in different places now, including business, and that there is a vigorous understanding with all parties that improvements are needed. And Congressman Joe Barton complimented the process we’ve begun and said that he can agree with the principles that we’ve laid out. My staff thought that was a very notable statement, they complimenting the process. Melody, I think, slipped that one in. (Laughter.)
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The nation’s largest organization of registered nurses today praised President Obama’s call for “comprehensive” healthcare reform in his speech to Congress Tuesday night, but emphasized that only genuine reform, as in expanding Medicare to cover everyone, will actually solve the crisis — and rein in the skyrocketing costs that the president noted are bankrupting Americans and costing jobs.

“After the past dismal eight years, it could not be more gratifying to hear a President emphasize the need for comprehensive action on healthcare, and recognize the growing crisis felt by American families,” said Malinda Markowitz, RN, co-president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

“But we cannot repair our broken and dysfunctional system, and bring our families the health and financial security they need without taking on the insurance giants which created and perpetuate the crisis by pricing people out of access to care, or bankrupting them if they attempt to use it.”

“Only one reform, Medicare for all, effectively controls costs at the source, by eliminating the stranglehold of the insurance giants and the price gouging we see in ever-rising premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and other daily costs that have caused so much harm to so many.
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Dr. Adrian Strand is something of a rarity.

Strand, 33, is a primary care physician in a country where such doctors are in short supply, and she practices in Santa Cruz County, where the challenge of recruiting frontline doctors is making it difficult for Medicare patients to access care.

But Strand works for Salud Para La Gente, a safety net clinic that is able to take advantage of a federal financial aid program aimed at encouraging primary care doctors to work in under-served communities.

As the county’s private practices struggle to recruit young doctors who can earn more and live more cheaply elsewhere, Salud has hired Strand and six other doctors through the federal National Health Service Corps program in the past two years.

Some medical professionals think the federal program could be a model to bring more doctors into primary care, improving the chances for Medicare patients, the poor and other under-served communities to find a personal physician.

“It’s huge for us for recruitment and retention,” said Dr. Jose Chibras, Salud’s chief medical officer.
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President Obama on Tuesday in Denver signed into law a $787 billion economic stimulus package that includes a number of health care provisions, the New York Times reports (Stolberg/Nagourney, New York Times, 2/18).

During a speech in which he discussed the benefits of the stimulus package, Obama said, “We have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of health care reform than this country has done in an entire decade” (Fletcher, Washington Post, 2/18). He added that the stimulus package provides “the biggest increase in basic research funding” for NIH, with an additional $10 billion for biomedical research and facility construction (Hall/Jackson, USA Today, 2/18).

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs also said that Obama might consider a second stimulus package, although no plan currently exists for such a package (Stolberg, New York Times, 2/18).

Meanwhile, Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack praised the provision in the stimulus package that will provide states with $87 billion in additional federal Medicaid funds but criticized the elimination of a provision in an earlier version of the package that would have allowed low-income workers who lost jobs that did not include health insurance to apply for Medicaid through 2010. He said, “The absence of temporary Medicaid coverage for unemployed workers represents a regrettable lost opportunity to help families during their period of greatest need” (USA Today, 2/18).

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