(Spirit Lake)– The federal healthcare overhaul and how it will affect local residents and healthcare providers was a topic of discussion on this (Tues.) morning’s “Get Up and Go Show”. LRH President and CEO Jason Harrington told KUOO’s Jeff Nix that it will be another year or so before we start to see the major changes kick in…(click here for comment.) “Really most of what’s going to happen in healthcare reform is going to happen in 2014 with insurance mandates and expansion of Medicaid and more people being covered. And then really, we’ve been in this mode for awhile, this push toward not just being a facility that takes care of sick people but how do we keep people healthy and well. Really how do we keep people OUT of the hospital, which is really an interesting dichotemy for us because historically, and really from a financial standpoint, that’s how the hospital has been sustainable, by taking care of people who are sick. And we do that well, and will continue to do that well, but the focus going forward is how do we do things to provide care to people in a least expensive, least costly, safest place of service. That’s a significant change in the model for us. And we take that on with great excitement, but at the same time it’s dramatically different than what we’ve done historically.”
Harrington says one of the components in the overhaul is to give consumers the ability to compare various healthcare plans and shop around. He compares it to buying a new car…(click here for comment.) “I think ultimately the government wants to purchase healthcare in much the same way: What’s the patient satisfaction, what’s the quality like? What’s it cost at your facility verses another facility? So I think that plays then into the insurance market, too, as far as where they’re going to drive patients to seek their care. It should be some place high quality, low cost, safe. Those are things I think Lakes Regional, I think, we can objectively hold out as being high quality, of great value, not only to the community but our patients. And I think we’ll see the insurance market start to look that same way.”
And as far as how individuals and families will be affected, Harrington says it will tend to vary between age groups and whether or not your employer already provides health insurance…(click here for comment.) “I think one of pushes in the Affordable Care Act was to expand coverage so that most of the majority of the country will have insurance coverage. And so that happened with the insurance mandate. People will have to buy insurance by 2014 or they’ll have to pay a penalty. I think there’s an attempt within the state and across the country to expand the Medicaid program which could impact a significant portion of the population, and then there’s penalties for employers who don’t offer health insurance and need to. So there’s multiple ways I think to encourage coverage. For children in the state of Iowa, if you’re in the position where you couldn’t afford healthcare coverage there’s a program called Hawkeye, kind of a spinoff from Medicaid. Iowa’s really done a nice job of kind of pushing for coverage for children in particular. So I don’t think that changes dramatically but I think it’s good to reinforce that.”
Harrington suspects the healthcare overhaul is probably here to stay now that the Presidential election is over and given the current political climate in Washington, D.C. Having said that, Harrington says there are parts of the measure that definitely make sense to him, and parts that do not.
