Candidates Asked to Join Task Force

by Lee Chilcote

A year ago, many health care advocates predicted it would be years before the issue of universal health care was higher on the national agenda. Yet poll after poll reveals that health care issues are on voters' minds, and candidates are responding with promises that they'll work to pass a strong Patients' Bill of Rights and enact a Medicare prescription drugs benefit. The U2K Campaign was launched to raise health care for all on the national agenda.

One encouraging sign that universal health care is back is the launching of the Universal Health Care Task Force in Congress. The task force, currently staffed out of Rep. John Conyers office (D, MI), is working to develop legislative strategies for assuring health care for all Americans, as well as working with grassroots advocates to educate and mobilize the American public.

The U2K campaign has made the nonpartisan task force a centerpiece of the fall 2000 election strategy. In 2000, U2K activists will ask candidates for Congress nationwide to make universal health care a top priority in the next legislative session through joining the Universal Health Care Task Force. U2K activists are making sure that involvement is real through asking those same candidates to work with others in the new task force to draft a principled and practical approach towards achieving universal health care within the first nine months of the 107th Congress.

For more information about the task force, contact Lee Chilcote, field organizer,
at the U2K Campaign office, 216/902-5577 or <info@u2kcampaign.org>.

From the Director, Larry Bresler

With the problems consumers are experiencing with managed care, escalating prescription drug prices, and an uninsured population approaching 45 million (1.8 million in Ohio), health care has become a priority issue in the 2000 election campaign. Consequently, it is again timely to address universal health care as a national campaign issue with our congressional candidates.

As the statewide coordinator of the U2K campaign, UHCAN Ohio is urging you as individuals and as representatives of organizations to ask for a commitments from your congressional candidates, that as congresspersons they will join the Universal Health Care Task Force in Congress to work toward the enactment of universal health care legislation that will guarantee comprehensive, accessible, quality, affordable and publicly accountable health care for everyone.

At the same time there are critical health care access, funding, and public accountability issues that need to be raised with candidates for the Ohio legislature. Candidates should commit to improving the health care provision by supporting:

• Using the tobacco suit settlement of $10 billion over 25 years for primarily health care needs;
• Raising Medicaid coverage to include parents of the children now covered by Healthy Start;
• Providing for adequate Medicaid reimbursements to providers, particularly for counties under managed care programs;
• Making the funding of primary care services a priority through state funding to community health centers;
• Easing the financial burden of people with disabilities by raising the Medicaid "Needs Standard;"
• Providing for greater funding support for health care services to the uninsured;
• Adequately funding the regional Health Systems Agencies to provide planning and oversight medical care provision;
• Re-enacting of regulatory legislation that would require hospital acquisitions, closings, and additions to go through a public review process as to need.

With the public recognition of our growing inability to access and pay for health care services, we must use this election to raise health care issues with the congressional and state legislative candidates to gain commitments to move us toward health care for all.

UHCAN Ohio Testifies on Distribution of HCAP Funds

In July, headlines warned of massive funding cuts to "safety-net" hospitals that treat the greatest number of uninsured people, under a plan from the OHA (Ohio Association of Hospitals and Health Systems). After a huge public outcry, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) rejected OHA's new formula for distributing Ohio's Hospital Care Assurance Program (HCAP) funds -- intended to reimburse hospitals which see a disproportionate share of uninsured and Medicaid patients - and developed a new formula. At an August public hearing held by ODJFS on its new rule, UHCAN Ohio joined safety-net hospitals, along with other advocates in Cleveland and Cincinnati, praising ODJFS for rejecting OHA's proposal, but raising other concerns.

Public accountability is at issue: UHCAN Ohio and others called for a public process to review HCAP to make sure that funds target hospitals serving the most low-income uninsured people (for more information, see article on our web site). Deemed too late for this year's allocation formula, UHCAN Ohio will be working along with the other advocates to assure that such a public process happens.

E-mail from a Member

It is time for this country to join the civilized nations of the earth in providing reasonable medical care for all our citizens. We are wasting millions of health care dollars each year in funding paper pushers who spend their time denying needed care. The idea of an HMO which would benefit when people are healthy was a brilliant idea. Unfortunately it has been translated by insurance companies into an opportunity to make money at the expense of our public health. It seems that most Americans these days have had experiences of paying out of pocket for expenses that should have been covered or spending hours on the phone getting corrections made so that they are paid. As a physician I see examples of this every single day. The HMOs are now restricting our use of medications and forcing physicians to spend hours each week on the phone with pharmacists, not to improve efficacy or price, but based on the sweetheart deals that they have with drug companies.

We have had a remarkable health care system in the US, albeit one that has never been as equitable as it should have been. We cannot let the profit motive continue to destroy it. With a national health care system we can reduce the wasted dollars spent on profit and bureaucracy, reduce the wasted time of health care professionals and provide coverage to the entire population. There are many models in the international community to choose from -- let's get busy.

Ann Reichsman, MD

Momentum Builds for Day of Action

In Cleveland, UHCAN Ohio is leading a coalition of U2K endorsers from labor, faith, and community organizations in planning events leading up to and taking place on October 15, the Day of Action for Health Care for All. (Cleveland's Day of Action is part of the national U2K Health Care Justice Week, October 13-22.) At the end of August, letters were mailed to all Ohio congressional candidates and to candidates for state office in Northeast Ohio asking them for a specific commitment to work for health care for all if elected. Candidates were notified that responses received during the campaign would be publicized, and that the coalition would follow up on them after the elections

During September, coalition members and their constituencies will blitz the media using op-eds, letters to the editor, calls in to talk shows, and other avenues, to urge a national guarantee of health care for all.

The October 15 program includes unveiling the "Health Care Wall of Shame," music, speakers, and pledges by candidates to support health care for all. Plan to come and bring friends, co-workers, and members of your group to this important event. For more information, call 216/241-8422.

Group Finds Problems with Free Care Practices

UHCAN Ohio's Free Care Monitoring Group just completed phone monitoring and site visits of every nonprofit hospital in Columbus. Because Columbus lacks a county hospital, all local hospitals share in treating the uninsured. Preliminary results show that: hospital staffs are inconsistent in their knowledge of available free care; it is sometimes difficult to get accurate information over the phone; and written descriptions of free care programs and procedures are not always available. And, if you don't speak English, don't bother to call!

UHCAN Ohio will be issuing a report on its findings, along with the committee's recommendations for marketing and improving free care. We look forward to working with Columbus hospitals in implementing our recommendations.

In the 12th Congressional District

UHCAN Ohio will attend candidate's forums this fall, to challenge candidates for the 12th Congressional District on universal health care. We'd like candidates to take the U2K pledge: to promise to make universal health care a top priority in the next congressional session. We need lots of people to help! Columbus-area members and friends who want to help out should call the Columbus office (253-4340).

UHCAN Ohio Language Task Force Members win Contract

Recently, several partners in the Language Task Force received a contract from Franklin County to improve services to non-English speaking refugees. Work includes: developing cultural competency training materials for county staff and contractors; training professional interpreters; and developing interpreter standards and code of ethics for interpreters serving the county. We congratulate lead agency Jewish Family Services and the others for winning the contract, which will greatly improve the quality of services to refugees and other immigrants.

Ohio Legislation Highlights

For more information on pending bills, call UHCAN Ohio's policy director, Cathy Levine, at 614/ 253-4340. Full texts and summaries of bills are available on the state's website:
www. legislature.state.oh.us.

State Budget Preview

Ohio's biennial budget must be signed by the governor by June 30, 2001. But the process is already underway: each state agency is preparing a budget for the governor, who will offer his budget to the legislature early next year. Thus, advocates for health care justice are already working to have their priorities included in the governor's budget.

The Ohio Family Coverage Coalition will build on its last budget victory -- expansion of Medicaid to working parents at or below federal poverty level, now known as "Healthy Families" Medicaid -- by pushing coverage for more of Ohio's uninsured.

1. Working parents up to 150 percent of the federal poverty level: Recently, the US Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA, which administers Medicaid) invited qualified states to request waivers to use CHIP money to expand coverage to parents. Ohio appears to qualify, which would reduce the state's share of total program costs to only $.29, instead of $.42 of each $1.00 spent (the federal government would pay the rest).
2. Community Health Centers: The coalition seeks $5 million per year to build up the struggling federally qualified health centers. Located in urban and rural communities with physician shortages, these health centers provide primary health care -- and a medical home -- to all patients regardless of ability to pay. Rising numbers of uninsured, plus cuts in Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements, have strained health center budgets. They need a big raise to care for Ohio's under-served people.
3. People with Disability on "Spenddown": For $5 million/year, Ohio could raise the Medicaid "Needs Standard," freeing thousands of low income people from having to "spend down" income each month to get their Medicaid cards.

Shares Event to Open Community Dialogue

Greater Cleveland Community Shares is preparing to launch its 2000 Workplace Campaign by opening a community dialogue on "Social Responsibility through Advocacy and Activism." The event will be held on Friday, September 29, 2000 at Cleveland State University's Cleveland Marshall School of Law from 9:30 A.M. to 12 noon.

Reverend Joan Brown Campbell, Director of Religion of the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, will give the keynote address. In a panel which follows, UHCAN Ohio, along with other member agencies, will pick up the theme. The dialogue program is free and open to the public. An optional lunch will follow (at a nominal cost) and requires an RSVP by Sept. 25.

Community Shares is a workplace giving federation of 33 local non-profits in Greater Cleveland, including UHCAN Ohio.

For more information about the event or about Community Shares, please call Hugh B. Shannon at (216) 371-0209, e-mail: shares@communityshares.org or on the website: www.communityshares.org.

Hold the Date!

Show your support for health care for all!

Web Action

Check out the UHCAN Ohio web page <www.uhcan.org/ohio> for sample letters to Ohio's congressional candidates urging them to work for universal health care. Also, find links to web pages directing you to information about the candidates in your district.