CLEVELAND – More than 100 government, business and health care leaders will gather at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital on Nov. 20 to join other children’s hospitals across the nation in hosting simultaneous town hall meetings to discuss health care reform and the issues of greatest priority for President-elect Barack Obama's administration. Rainbow is the only children’s hospital in Ohio hosting the town hall session. The town hall discussion will be held from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Proposals to Policy: a National Conversation on Health Care Reform is a unique effort that draws together local leaders in a town hall setting to debate and determine the main concerns facing health care reform in Ohio and how those concerns can translate to change at the national level.
The Rainbow town hall meeting will include a panel discussion with:
• Edward M. Barksdale, Jr., M.D., the Robert J. Izant, Jr. Professor of Surgery, chief, Division of Pediatric Surgery at Rainbow and vice-chairman, Department of Surgery at University Hospitals Case Medical Center;
• John Corlett, Medicaid Program director , Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS), a $18 billion agency with 4,000 employees.
• Marcia Egbert, JD, senior program officer, The George Gund Foundation, who supervises the Foundation’s grantmaking program of approximately $4 million annually in the health and human services arena.
• Rob Edmund, director of policy and external relations for the Ohio Business Roundtable, a non-partisan organization of the chief executive officers of Ohio’s largest business enterprises.
• Richard Stoff, founder and president of the Ohio Business Roundtable.
Rick Jackson, reporter and producer with WCPN and WVIZ, ideastream, will moderate.
Michael J. Farrell, president of UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, will make welcoming and opening remarks.
Rainbow is working with the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), to foster a dialogue about health reform that will address the trio of issues of access, quality and affordability of health care. NACHRI and Rainbow are particularly focused on improving health coverage provided by Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“Children's hospitals are the backbone of the pediatric health care infrastructure,” said Mr. Farrell. “In addition to providing top quality care, Rainbow and children’s hospitals throughout Ohio and the nation work to protect the health needs of all children. To do this we must make children’s needs a health care reform priority and advise the incoming administration as it sets priorities for its first term.”
Proposals to Policy, to be held at Rainbow, will begin with a live broadcast of a national level town hall meeting conducted at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Immediately following the conclusion of the live broadcast, the Rainbow town hall panel discussion will cover specific implications of health care reform for Cleveland and Ohio overall. In Ohio, 10.8 percent or 1.2 million of its resident, including 7.5 percent or 220,000 of its children, are uninsured.
“We are faced with a unique and historical opportunity to rise to the challenge of protecting the health of our nation’s citizens—particularly children, the most vulnerable among us,” said NACHRI President and CEO Lawrence McAndrews. “Just as leaders of the 1930s created social programs that simultaneously helped protect Americans and contributed to rebuilding our economy, we must recognize that today we have a similar opportunity to strengthen our health care system and build on lessons of the past.”
Children’s hospitals, led by NACHRI’s public policy affiliate the National Association of Children’s Hospitals (NACH), spent the past year creating a set of nine principles for children's coverage in health care reform. Children’s hospitals will introduce these principles to state legislators following the town hall meetings.
“The likelihood that major changes to the American health care system will be enacted under the new president have increased not only because the current system is broken and needs fixing but because the President-elect has promised to do something about it,” said Ms. Kridle. “It is true that for every action there is a reaction and we need to start thinking today about how major reforms will affect the health, wealth and well being of Ohio residents, businesses, hospitals, physicians, and insurers -- and the sustainability of our local health system.”
PricewaterhouseCoopers presented a new report titled Healthcare policy in an Obama administration: Delivering on the promise of universal coverage, which looks comprehensively at the implications of the new administration’s health reform proposals.
Among the topics that the Cleveland town hall meeting will discuss are health care reform for children; the State Coverage Initiative in Ohio, prospects for support of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP); the erosion of employer-based health insurance, and issues around universal coverage health insurance.
Leaders from business, local government and the health care industry in 13 additional cities will host their own simultaneous town hall meetings at their local children’s hospitals.