Reform needed to curb rising health care costs

Reforming our health care system is like rebuilding an airplane while it's in flight. It's incredibly tough to do - some say impossible.

But we have to try. _We have to try because we can't stay on this course and smash into a financial wall. Think that health care costs have been going up lately? Wait until all the baby boomers retire. And they just started.

The need for reform

Everybody is hurt by the flaws in our system today:

(Businesses can't keep paying more and more to offer health insurance. They're starting to only cover the employee and not wives and husbands and kids. That's bad for everybody.

(_Taxpayers can't keep paying more for health care.

(_Hospitals can't keep on shouldering the costs of people without insurance going to emergency rooms. They have a duty to treat sick or injured people who show up. You and I wind up paying the bill through higher costs to taxpayers and those with health insurance.

The problem is, how do you fix the system? It's not like you can stop giving shots to little kids and heart pills to grandmothers while we figure out how to restructure health care.

The myths-

Part of the problem is that people believe in persistent myths about health care.

Myth No. 1: People without health care are unemployed.

Actually, the biggest group of adults without health care do have jobs. They just work at small businesses that can't afford to offer health insurance to employees. Or they do seasonal work like construction, logging or fishing. Some people work two part-time jobs.

Myth No. 2: Fixing health care means everybody pays more. _

We spend a tremendous amount of money on health care already. If we used the money we spend more wisely, we could cover every child and citizen in the state - and do things to give people better health.

One example: up to 30 cents of every dollar gets spent on administration and all the different forms of paperwork that all the parts of our system use. Uniform standards could save a tremendous amount of time and money for doctors, nurses and patients.

Myth No. 3: Reform has to mean state-run health care like in Canada.

Here in Washington state, we believe in the power of the free market. There are ways to harness that power to give people better health care for less money than they spend today.

With small businesses, we're using an innovative free market idea that lets people get the plan they choose - not their boss - and keep their family's health coverage if they switch jobs.

The reform we passed last year will let people with part-time or seasonal jobs get health care. The market is a tool we can and should use.

Listening to the people and doing what works

It's hard to hear stories from real people who don't have health care, people who work hard and play by the rules and just can't find affordable health coverage.

Hearing those stories is one reason why we passed Cover All Kids, which put our state on the path toward making sure every child - rich or poor, black or white, Latino or Asian - can see a doctor if they're sick or hurt.

Covering all adults, however, is much tougher. _So this year, we're going to travel the state to talk to everybody with a stake in fixing health care. Business owners and workers. Doctors, nurses and patients. Hospitals and community health clinics.

The listening part is important because not only does everybody have a stake in the outcome, but everyone should have a say in how fix this system. It's important to get it right.

Another piece of the solution is ending the "what-if" debate that always happens. People will always disagree about which path we should take and how we should restructure the system.

We're going to take the time to have economists run through each system, to do cutting-edge computer modeling that can tell us what would happen under every scenario and system we can think of.

Your stories and ideas are important to us, so we hope to hear from you. Your health is important to us. And we think it's important to get this right, because all of us - Republicans and Democrats, doctors and patients, business owners and workers - need a health care system that works.

Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, is chairwoman of the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee. Rep. Eileen Cody, D-West Seattle, is chairwoman of the House Health Care and Wellness Committee.