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Bennet: Be patient with reform
Herald Staff Writer
Photo by YODIT GIDEY/Herald photos
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet wraps up a meeting with a group of mostly health-care providers at Mercy Regional Medical Center on Monday. At front are Dr. Marcus Higi, with Integrated Family Medicine and Aesthetics in Cortez, and Laura Rice, executive director of Southwest Health Net.
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YODIT GIDEY/Herald photos
Dr. Karla Demby, with Southwest Internal Medicine in Cortez, speaks to Bennet at Mercy on Monday.
We're trying to do something big in D.C., but there's a lot of room for unintended consequences.
- U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.
Their prescriptions for improvement were made at Mercy Regional Medical Center, where Bennet met with a room full of medical professionals from La Plata and Montezuma counties.
Leonard Cain, a Cortez family doctor, told Bennet insurance companies are burying doctors in bureaucracy, which drives up their overhead and decreases their time with patients.
"They're adding no value," he said.
He said the system won't improve until for-profit insurance companies are taken out of the driver's seat.
Bennet said he came to listen because he knows what the problems are but is studying the remedies.
"We're trying to do something big in D.C., but there's a lot of room for unintended consequences," he said.
The problems, he said, are double-digit increases in insurance premiums that are sapping families' spending power and skyrocketing costs that represent an inordinate amount of the country's gross domestic product and hurt our competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Bennet, playing devil's advocate, asked Cain if clamping down on insurance companies wouldn't stymie innovation, an argument free-market purists make.
"What kind of innovation do you need to pay bills? That's all they're there for is to pay bills," Cain responded.
Marcus Higi, another Cortez family doctor, said doctors are held hostage by insurance companies' capricious requirements.
"We're the serfs of the system," he said. "It's tyranny."
Higi said he had spoken with Bennet several weeks ago by phone about reform.
"I said, senator, you need to come down here and listen," Higi said after the meeting.
One participant commented about how the debate had become focused on extremes.
Bennet said, "I know it's frustrating to watch the demagoguery going on. It's frustrating to live through it."
But he said the debate is important to formulating a reform package that achieves what it intends.
"It's all doable," he said.
Little mention was made of the so-called public option that has come to dominate the debate.
On Monday, President Barack Obama was said to be open to nonprofit cooperatives as an alternative to government-provided insurance to compete with the private companies.
"The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health-care reform," Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Grand Junction on Saturday.
Bennet, speaking after the meeting, said reform shouldn't hinge on the public option, though he has said he supports it.
"I don't think we should be drawing lines in the sand," he said.
During the meeting, nurse Sherrod Beall, who works with school-based clinics, emphasized the importance of these clinics in rural health care.
She said they offer a way to treat kids who might not otherwise see a doctor.
"It is the ultimate doorway to get kids healthier," she said.
She appealed for more federal support for these clinics, including Medicaid reimbursements.
Bennet said he appreciated the challenges that rural providers face and said he introduced legislation to recalibrate Medicare reimbursement rates to help encourage providers to stay in rural areas.
Joe Theine, Mercy business office manager, suggested insurance companies should reward prevention efforts in their policies just as auto companies require preventive maintenance in their warranties.
Bennet asked for patience on reform, noting that even the best package will take time to implement.
"This isn't like switching a switch on and off," he said.
The Democratic senator, appointed earlier this year to replace Ken Salazar after his appointment as interior secretary, also made stops in Pagosa Springs and Silverton during his visit.
kburford@durangoherald.com'>kburford@durangoherald.com
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