Universal Health Care Forum

The Southbury League and the Brookfield League hosted a Forum on Health Care at the Southbury library on April 12, 2007 at 7:00 PM. The Litchfield League co-sponsored this event as part of the LWVCT Health Care Study.

The Forum Panel was: Lynn Ide, representing the Universal Health Care Foundation of CT. Michael Stankowski, State Commissioner of the Department of Social Services CT Senator Donald Williams.

Ms. Ide described the UHC Foundation as a group working with the Chambers of Commerce, faith leaders, researchers and the public to arouse awareness of the inadequacies and often injustices of the present healthcare organization and the need for affordable healthcare for all as outlined by the IOM (Institute of Medicine) principles: that

health coverage includes everyone

is continuous and portable regardless of changes of employment and marital status

is affordable to all

is sustainable by the State budget

is preventative, primary and continuous.

Commissioner Stankowski told us that the Dept of Social Services of CT manages the Husky program, which covers all children, with a gradual pay scale, a new health insurance, Charter Oak, which will cover adults from ages 19 to 65 years of age. The DSS uses 5 or 6 cooperating insurance
companies. Payment to nursing homes takes the largest part of the budget.

Senator Williams has been working for the last ten years on healthcare improvement possibilities,
 researching universal healthcare. He and his committee have studied and visited Japan, Europe and Canada, observing how they manage universal healthcare. He feels that basic healthcare is a human right. We must find, fund and implement a system (as those countries have) that puts money behind healthcare, and cut out the waste that our system allows, by utilizing computerized methods to collect and disperse information on patients, medications, treatments and plans of care. We would improve coordinated care and greatly reduce costs. He compared a hospital in Japan to a similar one in the US and found, for example, that where we employed 356 people in the accounting, billing department, they employed three!

Ten percent of our population have no health care. Many are under-insured. There is inadequate preventative care ( which could probably reduce adult and elder care) . He feels we can achieve this by first trying a universal plan with a group, such as State employees, and see how it works, and gradually encompass a larger group, 'until we achieve truly universal healthcare coverage. We must continue to remind our legislators of the need for this. It will take perseverance.

The next speaker was a local clergyman who spoke of the frustration felt by people with the complexity of the healthcare insurance situation, without satisfactory outcome, huge holes in mental health coverage and far too little preventive care. He said despair feeds distress which leads to poor health. Money seems to dictate policy at this time.

Joan Bertaccini