City News

Letters

Colleges

More Sports

Sunday Slant

Entertainment Extras

Directories

Sell

Research and Tools

Parts & Service

Find a Job

Quick Search

For Employers

Yahoo! HotJobs Local Search

Plan could require all in state to have health insurance

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer | Tuesday, February 8, 2005 11:26 PM PST ∞

LA JOLLA ---- Two state assemblymen told health officials in La Jolla on Tuesday that they plan to propose a sweeping health-care reform package in Sacramento on Thursday that would likely require all Californians to have health insurance.

State Assemblymen Joe Nation, D-Marin, and Dr. Keith Richman, R-Chatsworth, told health officials who gathered at UC San Diego to discuss the future of health care that they had been working on the comprehensive reform package that would "shake up the status quo," for more than a year.

Health-care officials, meanwhile, representing insurers, hospitals, doctors, county health services, academics and think-tank groups said California's, and the nation's, health-care system was broken and costs are spiraling out of control ---- in part because too many people don't have health insurance.

Officials said people without health insurance, or not enough health insurance, can't pay for their medical coverage.

That, they said, forces insurers, hospitals and doctors to try to make up shortfalls by passing the costs on to patients who have health insurance ---- an action that contributes to a continuing upward spiral in the cost of health care for everyone.

Neither assemblyman would go into the details of exactly what their "multi-bill" plan would entail.

But they strongly hinted that it would, if passed, require all Californians to have health-insurance coverage ----- just like car insurance.

"The system is crumbling," Richman said. "It's 6.4 million people (in California) who are currently not in the system who are not contributing to the financial stability of our entire health-care system."

Officials said that health-care costs in California have risen to $150 billion, and that the annual health-care costs for a family of four is roughly $10,000.

Richman and health experts on the panel of experts at Tuesday's seminar hosted by the Rand Corp. and the Communications Institute said there were multiple reasons why health-care costs continue to rapidly increase.

Those reasons include:

State and federal health insurance for the poor ---- Medi-Cal and Medicare ---- are too complicated, need to be simplified and "streamlined," and do not pay doctors and hospitals enough to cover medical service.

The cost of prescription drugs, pushed by incessant television marketing, continues to rise at double-digit percentages each year.

That patients over-use expensive drugs ---- rather than generics ---- and medical treatments, such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging and surgical procedures such as "stomach stapling," that they do not necessarily need.

That a significant portion of California's, and the nation's, population is getting older, meaning they need and use health-care services more often.

That expensive technological advancements such as hip, knee and other joint replacements continue to be used more and more.

In addition, Dana Goldman, a senior economist with the Rand Corp., and others said people are living longer than ever before, giving them a chance to be stricken with aging illnesses such as heart and lung disease that are often expensive to treat.

Michael Murphy, president and chief executive officer of Sharp Healthcare, said, "The system isn't working ... only one-third of hospitals in the state are making money. There have been eight hospital closures in the state of California in the last six months."

Surprisingly, Goldman said, many people who do not have health insurance are not poor.

He said recent studies show that more than one-third of the population who are uninsured have income levels that are twice the federal poverty level.

Those same studies showed that 55 percent of those who are uninsured are young ---- between the ages of 18 and 34.

San Diego's Dr. Bob Hertzka, president of the California Medical Association, said the association believes that a partial solution is for the government to mandate "individual health insurance coverage" ---- meaning that everyone in the state would be required to pay for health insurance.

Goldman said that could possibly be just for "catastrophic coverage," to start out with, just to prevent hospitals from having to eat the cost of expensive treatment for uninsured people who suffer traumatic car wrecks or serious illnesses.

Richman, meanwhile, said he agreed with all the observations at Tuesday's seminar. He said the legislative package he and Nation plan to unveil Thursday would be far-reaching and would not "just be talking about a mandate for universal coverage."

"When I started in the Legislature in 2000-2001, health care was a crisis," Richman said. "And it's only gotten worse. I really believe that this is the opportunity to make some real changes in our health-care system. We're going to roll out something on Thursday ... I think it will shake up the system."

Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com