Health care event provides perspective

Learning Commons coordinator Tania Alekson lived in Canada before moving to Kansas, so she has a unique perspective on the American health care debate.

“I see a lot of misrepresentation about what is happening in Canada,” Alekson said. “I’ve seen some true reports about Canada, but I’ve also seen some complete lies.

“Just the things some people get so excited about are taken for granted in Canada as being good things, so that’s always kind of weird to see.”

This view on health care led Alekson to help organize Healthcare: Get in the Game, hosted by the Learning Commons, Forsyth Library and the American Democracy Project.

The event featured presentations by three different health industry insiders. Dona Koenigsman, director of student health; Sunee Mickle, director of Government Relations for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas; and Dr. Marilyn Ray, a board certified radiologist and a fellow at FHSU’s Docking Institute of Public Affairs all presented.

Ray addressed the issue of why many Americans view health care as a right. She cited precedent in international documents endorsed by the U.S.

“This isn’t an abstraction. This is something that is really important,” Ray said. “I’m a public health person, and public health people look at population health.”

Ray also pointed to statistics showing that while 47 million Americans are uninsured and an estimated 22,000 deaths each year can be attributed to an inability to obtain medical care, the U.S. spends more on health care than any other country.

Mickle, meanwhile, discussed the health insurance industry’s role in the health care reform debate. She said health insurance companies in general have gotten a bad reputation.

“People need a bad guy in every story, and really the health insurance industry has become the bad guy,” Mickle said. “And really everyone needs to take responsibility for health care reform, and everyone needs to understand it. We’re all going to have to pay.”

She discussed several of the health care reform bills moving through Congress, pointing out that a public option would have an unfair advantage against private companies, since a public company would not have to pay taxes.

Mickle said Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas paid $23 million in taxes last year.

“Just to give you an idea of the cost of health insurance locally in our home state, we processed over 20 million claims last year,” Mickle said. “We paid out over 1.8 billion dollars last year just here in the state of Kansas. That’s a lot of money going out into the system.”

Mickle said many in the health care industry were pushing for other measures to reduce costs not included in the bill, including a stronger mandate for purchasing insurance.

Koenigsman focused on issues facing students, starting with how little students start off knowing about health care.

“What I’ve seen is a lot of (students) don’t understand a lot of (health care) terminology, and it’s very important to educate yourself,” Koenigsman said.

She said some efforts to lower the cost of health care for older people could result in a higher cost to students.

“Questions for students focus on, ‘do students need to buy insurance? Can we force them to pay for insurance?’ Sunee pointed out it’s going to help our health insurance by reducing the costs for older people, but there are a lot of people that disagree that it should be the younger adults’ responsibility to do that.”