Business leaders learn about health care changes

By the time all the sections of the health care reform law are rolled out, these teenagers will be nearly 30.

Alaska Job Corps Center health occupation students Renee Willmorth, 18, Halley Manumalo, 18, and Lalo Tupuola, 19, sat in on a dense, statistics-rich presentation about the new law at their school Sept. 22.

They summed the hour-long presentation up this way.

“Health care reform is a process,” Manumalo said.

“And it’s going to cost money,” Willmorth added.

Palmer and Wasilla Chamber of Commerce organizations partnered with the Mat-Su Health Foundation to provide local business owners with an overview of the economic impacts legislation at a combine meeting in the school’s cafeteria.

Speakers Tom Nighswander, Commonwealth North Health Care Action Coalition co-chair, Deb Erickson, executive director of the Alaska Health Care Commission and Mark Foster, principal of Mark A Foster and Associates told a cafeteria full of Valley business people the changes will allow 32 million more Americans to purchase health insurance. However, they said it does not drive down costs, as some had hoped.

“The bill is large, complex and under scrutiny,” Nighswander said.

Alaska is one of 20 states challenging the individual and state mandate portions of the law.

Nighswander said he’s heard a lot from the business community about the need to address health care costs in order to compete internationally.

“Read my lips, it’s going to happen,” he said. “Health reform is inevitable. We can’t afford not to.”

In order for American businesses to be competitive internationally, he said the business community needs lower health care costs.

Some portions of the law went into effect this week. The entire package of health care changes will rollout over the next decade.

“This is setting the stage for some pretty fundamental reforms,” Erickson said. “It’s a big law and it’s very complex.”

Foster said in the last 30 years, health care costs in Alaska increased from $.57 billion to $7.12 billion. By 2019, the cost is expected to climb to $13.10 billion.

Measured another way, health care expenditures were 6 percent of Alaska’s oil value at the wellhead in 1980 and 43 percent of wellhead value in 2010. And is estimated to equal 72 percent of the wellhead value of Alaska’s oil by 2019.

He estimates the changes passed this year will nudge costs higher in Alaska. Now, by 2019, Foster said heath care will equal about 73 percent of the wellhead value of Alaska’s oil by 2019.

An amendment to the law added by U.S. Sen. Mark Begich established the Alaska Health Care Task Force. Part of its report issued last week recommends a new payment structure for doctors reimbursed by federal agencies. And, according to the same report, 60 percent of Alaskans receive health care from the federal government through the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Veterans Affairs or from Medicare or Medicaid.

The changes passed this year mean customers who purchase insurance have more rights than before, Begich said. In the last year, 2.5 million people were kicked off their insurance plans for being too high risk, he said.

“People who assume this is the solution are mistaken,” Begich said. “It’s a step. That’s all it is.”

Debby Retherford provides insurance for her three employees at the Fence Emporium in Palmer.

“Our employees really are like family,” she said. “I’m always going to cover them if I can afford to.”

Retherford said she’s seen double-digit increases in premium spending in the past several years and had hoped the changes would make it more affordable to offer insurance to her employees.

“We were hoping the tax credit would help us a little more than it does,” she said.

For her, health care is a matter of life and death. Retherford related the story of losing an uninsured friend to colon cancer. “By the time she was sick enough to go to the doctor she had stage three colon cancer. She was the perfect candidate for early screening, but she couldn’t afford it.”

Even though Retherford research shows the changes won’t reduce her costs much, she still supports the concept of reform. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 252-2268.