5/30/09 Healthcare Reform Community Forum

The Silicon Valley Action Network hosted the first in a series of educational events on the topic of healthcare reform on the morning of May 30th at Stanford University.  We were joined by leading economists, politicians, health care professionals and legislators to help our community to better understand the very complicated issue of health reform.
 
We are dedicated to providing balanced, unbiased information from experts who represent all aspects of the health care community.
 
Here are the main topics and speakers at the forum:

• What are the options? Ken Jacobs is the Chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UC Berkeley.  He provided an overview of the current legislative proposals for health reform and their potential impact on employers, workers and consumers.
• What is the role of prevention? Helen Halpin is Professor of Health Policy and Director of the Center for Health and Public Policy Studies (CHPPS) at UC Berkeley.  She is also vice-chair of the California Health Benefits Review Program.  She provided an overview of her work with the Obama administration regarding to the role of prevention in health reform.
• What are the key ingredients for successful health reform? Alain Enthoven is the Marriner S. Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management, emeritus, at Stanford University. He presented the case for why America needs comprehensive health system reform that systematically addresses cost, quality, and access through managed competition among Accountable Care Organizations.
• What about the uninsured? Marty Lynch is the C.E.O. of LifeLong Medical Care, a Berkeley based community health center organization.  He discussed the role community health centers play in providing care to the nation’s population, their advancement of the health home concept, delivery of integrated care at the appropriate levels, and the use of health centers as a model of care delivery for health reform.

Handouts From The Event
 
Current Situation

• An Overview of the Health Care Crisis
• Understanding Health Care: The Basics
• Health Care FAQ's: Stakeholders, Costs and Spending, The Uninsured and Underinsured, Quality and Effectiveness
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Note: some of the handouts in this and the next section were extracted from the discussion guide Diagnosing Health Care Reform Solutions, from CaliforniaSpeaks.org

Potential Reform Plans

• Potential Goals
• Key Issue: How to Insure Everyone
• Key Issue: Controlling Costs While Maintaining Quality
• Key Issue: Paying For It All
• Obama Administration Proposals
• The Legislative Process
• Health Reform FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt)
• New handout -- Making the Case For Health Reform: pdf, doc

Details of the Public Option

• The Public Option
• Public Option FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) 
• Comparing Single Payer with Public Option

Speaker Slides

• Ken Jacobs, Health Care Finance Reform: The National Picture
• Alain Enthoven, Integrated Delivery Systems and the Reform of American Health Care
• A follow-up to Marty Lynch's remarks, Health Care Access and Health Reform: The Role of Community Health Centers
• Dan Carnese's Health Reform 101 talk from the 6/6/09 Democracy for America event: video, updated slides: pdf, ppt

 
Event Links

• Atul Gawande, The Cost Conundrum, The New Yorker, June 1, 2009
• Senate Finance Committee Policy Documents: http://www.sv4obama.com/node/737
• Committee on Economic Development, Quality, Affordable Health Care for All, Moving Beyond the Employer-Based Health-Insurance System: http://ced.org/issues/health-care
• Partnership for Prevention resources:
  • Healthcare Reform Page: http://www.prevent.org/content/view/197/208/
  • Real Health Reform Starts with Prevention: Full Report, Executive Summary
  • Model Legislative Language for Real Health Reform

 
Event Video

• Available here (more sessions to come)