Beebe assembles panel to solve state health-care issues
Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2007
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/198675/
In the midst of a congressional fight over low-income children’s health insurance coverage, Gov. Mike Beebe is assembling a “health-care round table” to develop solutions to the state’s problems with access to medical care.
“While we wait on the federal government to see what they’re going to do, we have an obligation as a state to continue to dialogue and see what we can do ourselves to spread affordability and accessibility,” he said during a healthcare conference sponsored by the Community Health Centers of Arkansas Inc.
The round table will be comprised of healthcare consumers, insurance companies and employers to address health-care coverage and other issues. The group will determine specific goals and proposals to examine, said Dr. Joe Thompson, the state’s surgeon general. Beebe asked Thompson to organize the conference.
The group is preceded by another round table focused solely on health insurance. That round table, which met for the last time in the spring, led to the development of ARHealthNet, a health insurance program for small businesses. For companies participating in ARHealthNet, government subsidies help pay premiums for employees whose household incomes don’t exceed twice the federal poverty guidelines, or $ 40, 000 a year for a family of four.
ARHealthNet began enrolling people in January, and health officials said then that up to 80, 000 people would sign up in the second phase of the program starting in late 2008. So far, fewer than 1, 000 people have signed up, said Julie Munsell, spokesman for the Department of Human Services. Participation has risen in recent weeks after Beebe toured the state promoting the program.
Thompson said there is increasing national interest in states experimenting with methods of funding medical care. Massachusetts, he said, is getting a lot of attention for its attempt to ensure coverage for all of its residents.
Massachusetts enacted the first universal coverage law last year. The state subsidizes insurance to make it more affordable and uses penalties to require people to buy it.
Beebe laughed when asked if he could see Arkansas adopting universal coverage policies.
“We’ve certainly got fiscal constraints on the ability to do some things,” he said.
He said he’s also asked the state’s congressional delegation to support an increase in federal funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
In Arkansas, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program helps fund ARHealthNet, prenatal care for immigrant women, and ARKids First. ARKids First provides health insurance for children from low-income families.
Senate and House bills to reauthorize the program funding passed earlier this month. The Senate version would increase the cost of the program nationally over five years to $ 60 billion, the House version to $ 75 billion, mostly by more than doubling federal tobacco taxes. Congress is working to keep funding for the program past its Sept. 30 expiration date and to expand coverage.
If funding remained flat, the program would cost $ 25 billion over five years. About 6 million children are insured through various State Children’s Health Insurance Programs today, and the competing bills would pay for an estimated 3 million to 4 million more children.
Congressional negotiators are working to come up with a compromise package by the Sept. 30 deadline, but President Bush has said both bills are unacceptable. He wants to limit the program to $ 30 billion over five years.
“As many of you know, President Bush is threatening to veto SCHIP reauthorization,” Sen. Blanche Lincoln told conference attendees. “I hope with all my heart that won’t happen. Because I do believe that not only is SCHIP a good investment for us as a country to invest in our children and their health care, but I also think it reflects our priorities as a nation.”
U. S. Rep. John Boozman, a Republican who represents the state’s 3 rd District, was the only member of the Arkansas congressional delegation to vote against the program’s renewal. He said in a recent interview that he supports reauthorization and the programs the state offers, though he said he’s generally uncomfortable with using program funding to expand health-care coverage for adults.
Boozman, who also spoke at Wednesday’s conference, said health care will be “the defining issue in the next two or three years.”
He told audience members, many of whom manage federally funded community health centers across the state, that reimbursement for physicians and pharmacists continues to be a problem.
“We can’t continue to solve our health care problems just by cutting reimbursements, and that’s essentially all we’ve done,” he said. Information was contributed by Laura Kellams of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.