Health Care

Adequate health care is a fundamental right. Yet it is a right that is violated too often in our society. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can be doing more to insure that all of our citizens have access to health care.

Keep MCP Open

The most immediate task in our area is to keep MCP Hospital Open. I have a personal tie to that hospital. My father-in-law, Harry Gottlieb practiced medicine and taught there for over forty years. My mother-in-law, Betty Gottlieb, received her Ph. D. in Biochemistry there. And my wife, Diane Gottlieb, received her M. D. there. My whole family has always used MCP as our hospital of choice. MCP is has always been known as a hospital that was at the forefront of medicine and yet, at the same time, served its community well. MCP doctors and residents were trained to be good clinicians, who listened to their patients and cared deeply for them. Although MCP is not in the 198^th district, it is the community hospital for many residents of the district. We must not let it close. I have been working with Lou Agre, the 21^st Ward Leader to help bring public pressure to bear on this issue and on various proposals to keep the hospital open.

Medical Malpractice

The second task is deal with the medical malpractice insurance crisis in Pennsylvania. There is an urgent need to bring the costs of insurance down. And, to do this, we will need various changes in the legal system to insure that malpractice settlements are reasonable and fair. However, I strongly oppose the Republican plan to change the Pennsylvania Constitution to allow for caps on jury awards payments for pain and suffering. These awards are sometimes unreasonable. But a limit of $250,000 is also unreasonable and would violate the rights of citizens. (Yet Representative Youngblood voted for this plan.) One wouldn’t use such an arbitrary rule in practicing medicine. Why would anyone think it is appropriate it the legal system? Just last week I read of a case in which a woman had both breasts after a hospital mix-up lead her doctor to conclude that she had breast cancer. In this case, and others like it, awards for pain and suffering that exceed this arbitrary limit might well be justified.

There are sensible alternatives to an arbitrary cap on jury awards. The rules that govern the instructions that judges give to juries could be changed. Judges could be empowered to review jury awards and reduce those that are unreasonable. Changes can be made in the rules that govern expert testimony in malpractice cases. These alternatives should be tried before radical changes adopted in our system of justice.

Reforming Mental Health Care

Mental health care in Philadelphia is in some ways excellent. But our system of mental health care is undermined by the division in the way we pay for drugs and hospital care. New psychiatric drugs have radically improved our treatment of severe and persistent mental illness. Combining these new drugs with supportive therapy enables people with mental illness to stay out of the hospital and, in many cases, to lead independent lives. And, most psychiatrists believe that the longer patients can stay in a stable condition, and avoid hospitalization, the better off they will be over the long term.

The effective treatment of mental illness is undermined because many of the new drugs are denied to patients by the managed care companies that are contracted to pay for them. Yet, while these new drugs are expensive, adequate care of patients is better for everyone in the long term. Patients who do not receive the drug treatments they need are less likely to be independent and more likely to be hospitalized, which is far more expensive than the most expensive drugs. Moreover, even when they partially recover, patients that become unstable and need to be hospitalized are more likely to be hospitalized in the future.

This irrational system is a product of the divided way we pay for mental health care in Philadelphia. The services of doctors and hospitals are paid for by the services are paid for by the Community and Behavioral Health program. Pharmaceuticals are paid for by managed care companies. It is not only better for patients but cheaper for the city and state to pay for expensive drug treatments rather than pay for hospitalization. But the managed care companies have no incentive to take the overall good of patients or the taxpayers into account.

If elected your state representative, I will introduce legislation that reforms this system and creates incentives for good mental health care.

Insurance for Prescription Drugs

I strongly support the recently enacted expansion of the Pace / Pacenet program that helps people with limited incomes purchase prescription drugs. However I think that, as the state financial picture improves, the income limits should be raised to allow more people to take advantage of it.

Health Insurance

A fundamental problem in health care today is that so many citizens are uninsured. As of 2000, 9% or 273,000 of the 3.1 million children in Pennsylvania had no health insurance.

The adultBasic and CHIP programs do go some way to making health insurance available to more Pennsylvanians. But too many remain uninsured. Some of those without health insurance do not take advantage of the adultBasic and CHIP programs because they don’t know about them or because the application process is confusing. As your state legislator I will work hard to inform the community about these programs and provide assistance for those who wish to take advantage of them. And I will support a new program to increase outreach to those eligible for but not aware of these programs.

These programs help. But they do not go far enough as they are limited to citizens of Pennsylvania with very low incomes. As a first step towards increasing access to health insurance I would expand both the CHIP and adultBasic by allowing individuals and families with higher incomes to take advantage of them and, also, by providing additional subsidies for those with low incomes. State Senator Allyson Schwartz has put forward sensible proposals to expand the CHIP program in this way.

The expansion of our current programs is not enough. Over time, we will have to fundamentally rethink the manner in which health insurance is provided in Pennsylvania. We need to devise ways to insure everyone while at the same time providing doctors and patients with the incentives to use our health care resources wisely. Our current patchwork of private and public insurance programs does not accomplish these goals.

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