State Sen. Toni Harp took questions from a panel, then asked one of her own: “Why do you think the people of this country so fear change that is going to improve health care for most people?” Amos Smith offered an answer.
Smith (pictured) was part of the audience for 21st Century Conversations, broadcast live on Citizens Television Thursday night. He’s president and CEO of the Community Action Agency of New Haven, the city’s largest anti-poverty organization.
“We’ve all been brainwashed into believing America is a country of scarcity, and if you give more to somebody else, you take something from me,” Smith suggested. “America is still the greatest country, the most powerful country on earth, yet the population believes only the few are supposed to have the most, not the many. It’s being influenced by party politics, or, if you will, brainwashing.”
Harp (pictured), who co-chairs the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, was joined by state Rep. Betsy Ritter, co-chair of the Public Health Committee, and Frances Padilla, vice president of the Universal Health Foundation of Connecticut. The first question host N’Zinga Shani asked them was: Now that the state legislature has passed the SustiNet health care reform bill, what’s the next step? And why is its implementation delayed for two years? The bill sets a process in place to study how to bring about universal care while trimming costs and improving the way care is delivered.
Padilla (pictured) explained that a two-year implantation phase was written into the bill, to allow the state to prepare for universal health care. “It has acknowledged that much planning must be done in order to be ready to receive enrollees in 2012. There need to be health care provider networks in place; the benefit levels have to be defined; there has to be a system of electronic medical records established; the SustiNet plan calls for everyone to have primary care, and that whole infrastructure has to be developed.”
She also noted that a two-year delay would delay the costs of providing universal coverage — a must in this worst recession since the Great Depression. She added that federal reform could affect what happens in Connecticut. The state reform could still go forward in the absence of changes at the federal level, but it would be within the confines of the existing system in which costs keep rising and in which insurance companies can still exclude people from coverage because of preexisting conditions.
Activist Mary Johnson (pictured) said, “We need health care that covers everybody with comprehensive coverage and pays for everything through one payer — the government. The villain is the insurance companies that dominate health care.”
Shani said, “I think we all agree that would be the ideal situation, but I don’t think it’s going to happen under the present governmental system we have.” She wanted to move on to other more realistic possibilities, like saving a public option in any federal health care reform bill that passes.
Harp pointed out how much health care is already funded by the government: Medicare, Medicaid, SAGA for poor single adults, HUSKY for children and their parents, plus all municipal employees. “We already have 60 to 70 percent of the dollars that need to be there [for universal coverage]. And if we could find a better, more efficient way of utilizing those dollars, that could get us to almost 80 percent, and if the federal government just does a few things we could be ready to implement the program in our state.”
After the show, a reporter asked Harp if she think single payer is pie in the sky or a realistic option. “I think single payer is realistic,” she said. “We are going to get there because we have to” because the current system is not sustainable, “but the insurance companies are going to go kicking and screaming.” How long will it take? She offered a prediction: “Ten years.”