Group to seek support for health care reform

Jeffrey Libby

Friday, Oct. 13, 2000 | 10:23 a.m.

Conference

A conference on "Quality Health Care for All Nevadans: Alternative Solutions" will be held on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the UNLV Dungan Humanities Building, Room 101.

Dr. Hugh Armstrong, professor and author from Canada, speaks on "Myths Surrounding the Canadian Health Care System and What Americans Can Learn from the System."

In addition, a panel will present current Nevada health care services provided by Medicare, Medicaid, Clark County, health insurance companies and the Nevada Ombudsman for Health Care. Following the panel, options available to Nevadans will be discussed and evaluated by Dr. Bob Griss, health care analyst, D.C. Center on Disability and Health.

While candidates focus the health care debate on the high cost of prescription drugs for seniors, 400,000 Nevadans continue to live without medical coverage -- most of them low-income working families and minorities.

But a coalition of state and national health organizations is taking the first steps toward broadening the dialogue.

When the elections are over, the groups hope to generate a groundswell of support for wide-ranging health care reform. Unlike in 1993, when the proposals came from Washington, the coalition this year wants to create a grass-roots effort coming from small meetings across the country.

"We want to re-engage the discussion during these unprecedented good times," Larry Matheis, executive director of the Nevada State Medical Association, said. "Nevada has seen 10 years of uninterrupted growth, but the majority of the population is still one or two paychecks away from real trouble if there is an illness in the family."

The local League of Women Voters, Nevada Health Care Reform Project and Kaiser Family Foundation are planting the seeds of that movement Saturday with a conference at UNLV on health care. It will feature a talk on the Canadian health care system and discussion by panelists.

"The reason we have managed care reform is because the anecdotes caught up with the industry," Matheis said. "And now the public is nervous again with so many people not insured.

"We need to look at other models, begin to build consensus, so next time the issue reaches the national level, which I predict will be soon, we'll start off a little more informed."

There is no shortage of anecdotes. Ruth Mills, director of the Nevada Healthcare Reform Project, a coalition of 56 organizations, said she has heard of several families that declared bankruptcy in order to pay medical expenses.

And in what Mills calls a more common scenario, hospitals deny care to uninsured people with minor health problems until the illnesses worsen to an emergency state and require hospitalization. She said most of these illnesses -- breast cancer being one example -- could be treated better and less expensively if they were addressed earlier.

"We have many people who work two or three part-time jobs or a job that doesn't offer benefits, and they still can't afford insurance. What do we do about them? These are middle class, lower middle class families who simply can't afford the high cost of health care."

Mills believes unless reforms are made, costs will continue to escalate and many more Nevadans will join the ranks of the uninsured. Nevada ranks fifth worst in the nation, with one in every four residents without health coverage. Nationally, one in five Americans is uninsured.

In addition, minorities are twice as likely as whites to be uninsured, according to federal health statistics from 1997. Nevada also has some of the strictest guidelines for Medicaid, ranking it 49th in the nation in the number of people receiving the federally funded health coverage. It also ranks among the six worst states for the number of available doctors, nurses and hospital beds.

Still, significant reforms have been made at the state level in the past four years, in large part due to initiatives headed by the Nevada Health Care Reform Project.

In 1997 the coalition drafted the Nevada Patients' Bill of Rights, which ensured coverage for many Nevadans, but left out casino workers, federal employees and many employees of small businesses.

Two years ago the group helped create the Governor's Office for Consumer Health Assistance to help people navigate the health care system.

New federal children's health care programs helped provide 12,000 Nevada children with medical coverage in 1999.