Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 19, 1994 TAG: 9403190053
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Put six health-care consumers in a room, promise them an audience with one of the architects of the Clinton health plan, and the horror stories will pour forth.
Roanoke surgeon Dr. Tony Donato worried about the 57-year-old patient who needed a pacemaker but whose insurance company wouldn't pay to admit him to the hospital. Do it on an out-patient basis, the insurance company told Donato.
Doris Thomas, a credit manager at Lewis-Gale Clinic, worried about a sick child forced to change pediatricians because of a change in health insurance plans. The new doctor, she said, would be less familiar with the child's medical history.
And Skip Brown, a registered investment adviser with the Roanoke office of Edward D. Jones & Co., remembered a client who needed a hip replacement but delayed the procedure a year so that he could switch jobs - and insurance companies - to make sure it would be covered.
Brown played host Friday to five Roanoke Valley professionals chosen to take part in an interactive satellite call to House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. Gephardt, seated in the Edward D. Jones satellite studio in St. Louis, Mo., pitched comprehensive health reform to more than 14,000 Americans in 2,800 Jones offices around the country.
Jones arranged for the satellite interview as part of an ongoing effort to broadcast topical programs to its investors and their friends on a bimonthly basis. The company will replay the hour-long broadcast at 8 p.m. Tuesday in the auditorium of Virginia Western Community College. While the firm has invited 400 people, the event is open to anyone who cares to attend, Brown said.
"We'd love to have 600 people show up," he said. "We'll do it twice."
Edward D. Jones uses its broadcasts to keep investors up to date on current events that might affect their financial portfolios. But for Gephardt, it was another opportunity to make a computer-age pitch to the American people for the need to overhaul the country's health-care delivery system.
True to its image as the high-tech presidency, the Clinton administration has been sending its message for months down the nation's information superhighways, through cross-country conference calls and downloading via satellite.
Earlier this month, President Clinton spoke to a woman in Blacksburg about home health care during a coast-to-coast telephone conference call. Today, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congressman L.F. Payne, D-Nelson County, will take part in a videoconference on health reform at the University of Virginia and 10 other sites around the country.
That pulls the national debate into local living rooms and offices in ways even CSPAN couldn't imagine. And even though the questions prepared by the five Roanokers seated in Brown's office Friday got stuck in a superhighway traffic jam - never making it to Gephardt - that didn't stop them from holding a lively little debate of their own.
Gephardt ignored the issue of medical malpractice, said Lynn Martin, a local attorney. The government needs to place caps on malpractice awards if it wants to reduce the cost of health care, she insisted.
Diane Powell, who works in the computer and financial industry, saw a need for supplemental insurance, or "gap insurance," to cover the things Congress is likely to leave out of its basic, standard health insurance policies for all Americans.
And somebody is going to have to figure out how to pay for all the paperwork and administrative costs created by managed care networks, Thomas said.
"Look at all the money we're spending," she said, on people paid to determine how many office visits should be allowed to patients, which procedures to cover and how to make sure patients are getting only the services for which they have been approved.
For those whose questions did get through to Gephardt, there were few definite answers. Congressional subcommittees are still debating the issue and are just now beginning to write legislation, the Missouri Democrat said.
He did predict, though, that Congress would pass some kind of health-care reform bill before the year was out.
"Probably, the chance is, in my view today, better than 50-50," he said. "I think that the American people want this to happen."
What the final plan will look like, Gephard couldn't say. It likely will include voluntary, not mandatory, health-care purchasing cooperatives, he told the Jones investors. It probably will not include a completely government-run health system. But it will ensure that everybody pays the same premiums, regardless of how old they are or where they live.
"They're prepared to vote for something, if it's at all reasonable," he said.
by CNB