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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowMost business groups cheered when Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., introduced a health reform bill with no so-called public option,
a controversial government-run insurance plan for working adults.
But there’s a big group that would like
to see it back on the table—hospitals.
That includes Clarian Health CEO Dan Evans.
Evans “To
the extent the Baucus legislation doesn’t insure everybody, there’s going to be a shortfall between who’s
covered and who isn’t,” he told Fox Business in an interview Sept. 21. “So a public option might actually
be a good thing for the hospital industry.”
The Baucus bill would leave 25 million Americans uninsured,
according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office. By contrast, the House of Representatives version of health reform
would reduce the uninsured to 17 million. Both numbers include illegal immigrants.
The 8-million-person difference
is big to hospitals because people without insurance don’t tend to pay their bills as regularly as people with insurance.
For Clarian, uninsured patients accounted for about 5 percent of revenue, or $150 million, last year. But they also
contributed a major chunk to uncollected bills, which by Clarian’s accounting totaled $142 million last year.
The public option isn’t Evans’ biggest wish, however. He said Clarian is lobbying for Congress to change
the way doctors are paid and to give incentives for patients to see one doctor regularly enough for that doctor to manage
the patient’s overall health, a concept called a “medical home.”
If those things don’t
happen, the cost estimates for health reform, already running above $800 million over a decade, will be much higher, Evans
warned.
“Unless utilization is reduced or the increase in utilization declines, it will cost a lot more
money than anybody estimates.”
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