Docs offer reasons for reform

POST HALLS - Health care providers - frustrated with tea party groups clashing with coffee party groups, half truths and fear politics - described to a crowd of about 80 people at Post Falls City Hall Saturday why from their vantage point the health care system needs reform.

Dr. Joseph Abate, a cardiologist at Heart Clinics Northwest, said, "(It) is something that we as physicians all know needs to happen, our health care system does not work, for all the people it needs to work for. When fear leads to the absence of intelligent discourse, then the problem will never get solved."

The group Friends of Idaho Health Care Reform organized the rally for the doctors to speak.

A local Republican group showed up, many holding signs protesting health care reform. Signs read: "Stop Radicals from Hijacking health care," and "Stop government paid abortions," and "Government run health care is scary," with a picture of a skeleton, or "Born free and taxed to death," with the last word in splattered red paint.

The crowd was split evenly between those at the rally and those protesting it. Jeff Ward, president of the Kootenai County Reagan Republicans, said they "wanted to make sure that where there were promotions of socialized medicine, there are voices against it."

Dr. Abate, of Coeur d'Alene, told the audience that people with health insurance are paying for those without it.

"It's called cost shifting," he said. "When hospitals can't pay for people who come in with no insurance, then your insurance has to go up."

Dr. Rolf Nesse, of Coeur d'Alene, said 50,000 children in Idaho are uninsured. "Children are our future, and I think we should take care of them."

Citing a report from the Idaho governor's office, Nesse said if Idaho doesn't reform health care there will be increases in the number of uninsured, fewer employers will offer coverage, and coverage will become more expensive.

Dr. Leanne Rousseau, Coeur d'Alene, said people need equal access to primary care, the system needs to protect individuals from bankruptcy when disaster strikes, and the system can't discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions.

Jan Mosely, of Kootenai Medical Center, who has been a nurse for 30 years, said, "We are all just maybe a job loss or a serious illness away from being in the same boat as some of these people that sometimes we tend to judge."

The No. 1 cause of bankruptcy in this country is health care costs, she said. For too many people the only health care they get is in emergency rooms. "It's horrible, inefficient, and too late," she said.

Neil Nemec, speaking as a businessman and health care provider as a primary-care doctor in Coeur d'Alene, said, "Health care costs for small businesses are just devastating."

Premiums for businesses are going up and won't be sustainable long, if they are now.

Charles Grave, 56, of Hayden, who protested the speakers' presentations, said it's scary how few know what's in the legislation before Congress now. Plus, he said, "Name one thing for me that government does efficiently. There's nothing. The military is good, but it's not efficient."