The National Conference of State Legislatures (http://www.ncsl.org/programs/seminars/springagenda/showmain.cfm?termsel=Health%20Committee%20&sessiontype=1) lists standing committees and their agendas. Looking at the Health Conferences scheduled in April, is one entitled : "High-Cost, High-Risk People: Whose Responsibility?"
Sounds like a worthy topic but look who's talking:
The Moderator is Representative Susan King, Texas. Little research will inform consumers that Ms. King is closely affiliated with physician interests, and at her election to the Texas State Legislature was cited as a victory for TEXPAC in getting their preferred candidate elected (http://www.texmed.org/Action.aspx?id=5354is even reported ashttp://www.texpac.org/). Two speakers, one a representative of the insurance industry, AHIP and a representative of Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute are scheduled. The description of the conference is listed as follows:
"State interest in health reform creates special challenges for covering patients who are considered "high risk" and high cost. The sickest 10 percent of our population account for more than 60 percent of U.S. health spending. How should these people be treated by insurance market underwriting practices? What are the roles of state-sponsored high-risk pools, the health insurance industry, government, providers and the high-cost individuals themselves in providing and paying for care?"
http://www.ncsl.org/programs/seminars/springagenda/showmain.cfm?termsel=Health%20Committee%20&sessiontype=1
What's a consumer to do? Well, first we can go to the NCSL website and look up which representatives are on such committees and notify our own legislators via email (they are OUR representatives) if we have issues. Without entertaining arguments that a TEXPAC representative, a pro-insurance company representative, and a representative of a University will necessarily disregard the key issues for consumers, it is interesting that there is no representative of the consumer stakeholder.
We cannot make progress without a core recognition that doctors, insurers and legislators all owe the consumers, the average people not represented, their livelihoods and careers. Health care reform will not come about by increasing profits for health services providers and insurers through reduction of coverage, asking citizens to pick up the slack for the bigger discrepancy between cost and coverage, or trying to pass some inadequate legislation that will provide more people with meaningless coverage (meaningless meaning more of the same).
Where in this conference are the individuals who will argue in favor of cost controls on the rises in health services caused by the practice of defensive medicine, and passing on the costs of physician practices and insurance, as well as good old-fashioned greed, to consumers instead of empowering physicians to start examining their own expenses and taking responsibility for themselves?
Where are the speakers who will remind politicians that wasting money on any old insurance is not a solution to the health care crisis which in large part is created by the INADEQUACY of insurance coverage in helping pay for the cost of needed medical services for illness?
Where are those who are going to point out that insurance companies could save BILLIONS by reducing fraud within their own companies? (Look at talking points in the UNH report at http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/2008/04/dont-cry-for-unh.html).
A consumer representative is needed, any one of the millions of Americans with insurance and facing a health services crisis could be at that conference, but instead, we have doctor-approved legislators, insurance company representatives and philosophers....ridiculous.
