California likely must forge own way on health, forum experts say
The discussion Thursday was to have focused on how California could begin implementing sweeping federal legislation to remake the country's health care system.
Instead, some of the state's top health care experts, convening for a health care forum in Sacramento, expressed uncertainty about whether California should just move ahead with its own plan to cover the state's nearly 7 million uninsured.
"This is an awkward time to be having this conversation," noted Kim Belshé, the state's director of health and human services.
With the future of a federal health care overhaul now steeped in doubt, states like California may have to forge ahead – with or without the federal government, she and others said Thursday.
"We got to get on with it … regardless of what's happening on the federal agenda," said Belshé, one of about a dozen experts taking part in the forum convened by the Center for Health Improvement and the California HealthCare Foundation.
With 7 million uninsured and a similar number enrolled in Medi-Cal, the government insurance program for the poor and disabled, there is growing urgency to address the state's costly health care woes, the experts agreed.
In a mere two years, public spending on health care could account for more than half of all U.S. health care spending, according to a government report released Thursday. For cash-strapped states like California, which spends about a sixth of its general fund on Medi-Cal, the burden is cause for alarm.
Health spending in the United States last year reached $2.5 trillion, and it consumes an ever increasing portion of the budget of recession-battered families, according to the study.
The larger-than-expected increase – the biggest single-year expansion of the health care industry's share of the U.S. economy since 1960 – caused alarm among some of the state's top health experts gathered in Sacramento.
Published Thursday in the policy journal Health Affairs, the study is based on projections by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It does not take into account any possible effects of health care legislation.
"The data matters because of what they represent – they represent real people. … They represent thousands personal stories," said Micah Weinberg, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.
But whether California can muster the political will to take major action on its own is uncertain. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came close, but his plan to remake the state's health care system in 2007 unraveled when the Republican governor and Democratic leaders failed to gain support of the rank and file.
Overhaul efforts aren't over, Belshé said.
Whatever form it takes, she said, there would be "an essential role for states – that's not going to change."