Senior Leadership Northeast Minutes for August 18, 2009

 The August 18, 2009 meeting of Senior Leadership Northeast was convened at the Colleyville Chamber of Commerce building at 9:03 AM by Chairman Ed Havran.

 There were fourteen (14) individuals present representing (8) Northeast Tarrant County cities.

 Minutes were approved as reported on the website.

 Randy Moresi, CEO of North Hills Hospital in North Richland Hills, spoke about healthcare in a private hospital system. His comments included the following:

 The current administration states that if you’re not for HR 3200 you must be against healthcare reform.  Not true, hospitals have wanted reform for over 20 years but this bill is more about expanding government control.

We didn’t really have a problem back in the 70’s- only small amounts of people were uninsured and we took care of them.  Then the population of uninsured grew in the mid 80’s and so many hospitals were trying to dump their uninsured patients on other hospitals that laws were passed to prohibit any hospital from turning away patients with life-threatening, limb-threatening or woman in labor conditions.  North Hills Hospital has already spent over $15 million in free care since January of this year (will have spent $25 million by the end of the year).  This is not all indigent, the uninsured is a problem (company doesn’t offer insurance or they can’t afford).  And where do most of these people go?  The emergency room-the most expensive place of all.

Hillary tried to reform healthcare and failed.  Both parties are to blame (the Democrats wanted to control and the Republicans did nothing).  If something isn’t done, we can kiss our healthcare system goodbye in five years. 

Competition from the government would be unfair.  Our private healthcare subsidizes some of this, but businesses are sick of high premiums so it’s all coming to a head.

We don’t need a public takeover to fix the problems, the rules are just wrong for private healthcare:

1.      This all started with WWII.  We had wage freezes and a shortage of labor so companies started paying for employee healthcare.  This removed the patient from decisions because a third party was going to pay.

2.      Then we had the start of Medicare in the 1960’s.  This also took responsibility off the consumer.

With all the advancements in medicine and technology through the years, we haven’t seen any improvement in the financing of healthcare. 

 1. We cannot reform healthcare without addressing malpractice reform.  In our current situation, doctors cannot play the “What if…” game.  A doctor will order a test for you which they know won’t help or change your course of treatment, but if they think there’s a remote chance they might have to appear before a jury, they’re ordering it because not ordering could ruin their career.

 3. Everyone should be required to have catastrophic health insurance.  We have it for automobile insurance.  We could have a special state pool for the indigent (like automobile).  Young people don’t want to pay for healthcare.  They have low claims and if coverage was mandatory, this would help spread the risk,plus they would be covered for car accidents, etc. (huge bills for neur. damage).  Insurance should also be portable (if someone is laid off).

4. Individuals could get a tax credit for high premiums like your employer does.

We have all these methods that wouldn’t cost much, but the government doesn’t want to talk about it.

HSA’s are great but the government has no interest in expanding.

We are responsible for some of the costs (50% of our nation is obese which not only leads to heart disease and cancer but also causes a lot of other expensive problems such as orthopedic issues, for all of our problems we want pills or surgery (gastric bypass), 23% of us still smoke).

We need to quit blaming everyone, we’ve grown this way over many years.

The President claims doctors make decisions based on their own needs (they can make more money by cutting off your foot than managing your diabetes-this is insulting and the surgical doctor is not even the same doctor, so it just doesn’t ring true).

The huge response we’re seeing at the town hall meetings is due to the build up of frustration over the auto and bank bailouts.  No one really said anything back then but now it’s personal.  Healthcare is very personal and hits everyone.  It’s also 1/6 of our GDP.

We’ve seen Britain and Canada’s program and we don’t want it.  The quality of life goes down.  You can’t get a hip replacement close to the end of the year because you won’t die without it (around October everyone from Canada comes to our northern states to get treatment because Canada is out of money for the year).

How about central electronic health records?  This is a good thing because it will keep hospitals from ordering too many tests (too much radiation).  The scary part is using this information to control decisions (govt. and insurance).  This was coming anyway.

Medicare is grotesquely inefficient.  The laws are hard to understand.  It always gets worse.  Everything is fraud with Medicare.  The coding system is difficult and if someone accidently codes pneumonia wrong-it’s fraud.  Many primary care and internal medicine doctors aren’t taking Medicare anymore.  Many doctors are quitting or retiring because of these difficulties (Medicare has rationing without doing anything).  Many doctors are also starting to work for hospitals instead of having private practices (the younger generation doesn’t want the hassles).

North Hills does a hybrid-they contract, not hire.  This allows the doctors to spend more time with the patients.  For instance, most doctors could not afford to work at their senior clinic.  Primary care makes ½ to 1/3 of what a specialist makes.  This is our fault because we pay for a specialist but not primary.  We have a huge shortage of primary care physicians.  We’ve got to get more money to the primary care doctors.

Rebecca Barksdale from County Commissioner Gary Fickes’ office reported on the “Empowering Seniors 2009” conference on October 29.

Meeting was adjourned at 10:30 AM.

Respectfully submitted,

Rebecca Barksdale