'Public is ready for health-care reform'

The pressure is on to overhaul the nation's health insurance -to bring most if not all Americans under one umbrella this year.

The devil is in the details to do so much so quickly.

That's how national and state hospital leaders Wednesday portrayed efforts to make health insurance available to all.

Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association; Larry Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes & Services for the Aging; and Dick Brown, president of the Montana Hospital Association, attended a hospital leaders' conference in Bigfork on Wednesday.

Prior to that, they held a press conference at Kalispell Regional Medical Center to discuss their associations' stances on reforming health care in 2009.

One of those stances is to make health insurance available to everyone through some type of a nationwide insurance pool, they said.

A coalition of 96 health and retirees organizations estimates that about 45 million Americans do not have medical insurance, and about 200 million adults don't have insurance to cover the costs of long-term health services and support.

The 96 groups wrote a March 25 letter to President Barack Obama that cited two polls of 800 and 1,000 people that showed more than three-quarters of the respondents believe long-term heath-care insurance is an important goal for health reform.

Obama "identified health reform as the No. 1 domestic priority," Umbdenstock said.

Spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., efforts are under way to set up nationwide health insurance legislation this summer with a target of Obama signing off on it this fall."

There are many who question such an aggressive time frame," Umbdenstock acknowledged. "We all agree about the need to get after it sooner rather than later."

Brown added: "If it doesn't happen early on in a president's term, it doesn't happen."

The public is feeling more pressures in seeking and paying for health care - if not for themselves, then for people that individuals personally know, the three said.

"The public is ready for health-care reform," Minnix said.

However, all three acknowledged that creating a nationwide health insurance pool - broadly envisioned as filling in gaps and bring everything under one umbrella - has numerous unanswered questions, including:

n Who will be in charge? States regulate health insurance. How will the feds get involved?

n What's the price tag? Who will pay what? How will fairness in payments be tackled? "The key question is how we all pay for it," Umbdenstock said.

n Will people pay more? Pay less? Pay the same? Or a combination of these possibilities?

n How will big employers, small businesses, individuals, the uninsured, Medicare and Medicaid all fit in?

n Should people's participation be required or voluntary?

Mapping out these plans likely will go through many conceptual, financial and political hoops, with implementation probably being in small steps, they said.

"It may take a decade for some things to see fruition," Brown said.

Umbdenstock said: "We see a lot more problems with the status quo. … No one is advocating for the status quo."

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com