Posted on: Friday, January 17, 2003

ISLAND VOICES
Let's keep 'Health State' status

Michael A. Gold is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Hawaii Medical Service Association

Hawai'i nurses endure a month-long labor strike. Physicians walk out in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in protest of rising medical malpractice insurance rates. Thousands of General Electric employees hold a national strike to protest an increase in their healthcare co-payments. Employer health plan premium rates soar.

With newspaper headlines like these, it is clear that rising healthcare costs represent one of our nation's most critical challenges.

Historically, Hawai'i has enjoyed one of the nation's most efficient and effective healthcare systems, but times are changing. We are not immune to this real and growing cost challenge. HMSA has served our community well for over 64 years by providing high-quality, affordable health plans, and we are as committed as ever to continuing this tradition.

Today, our health plan rates are among the lowest in the country, but escalating costs do pose a threat to our renowned system.

To ensure that we maintain Hawai'is long-held reputation as the "Health State," it's important that every stakeholder in the healthcare system — including doctors, hospitals, nurses, health plans, drug companies, employers, labor unions, lawmakers and consumers — work together to keep healthcare affordable and accessible.

After a decade of relatively modest growth in healthcare costs, we are seeing double-digit premium increases across the nation. Driven largely by hospital, pharmaceutical and physician expenses, today's healthcare dollar is being ravenously consumed by new technology, designer drugs, aging Baby Boomers and high use of services among the population in general.

In fact, this past year alone, the nation's healthcare expenses totaled $1.3 trillion — more than 14 percent of the U.S. economy. That's more than Americans spent on food, housing or automobiles.

The challenge that we as a community face is to balance the interests of the partners in our healthcare system to maximize the limited dollars in the system. This balance is not easy to master because of one simple fact: The stakeholders have very different wants and needs. A consumer may want a health plan to provide more services. Employers fear benefit expansions because of increased premiums.

Meanwhile, physicians desire increased reimbursement rates from health plans and government. The reality is that there just aren't enough dollars to go around, and there is no silver bullet that will satisfy everyone.

We as a community are faced with coming up with creative interventions to help mitigate future cost inflation in our state's healthcare spending. But only through enlightened collaboration will our community continue to enjoy a truly successful healthcare system.

With the leadership of Hawai'i's new governor and the breadth of knowledge and expertise in the Legislature, we are confident that a thoughtful review of our healthcare system will prove fruitful. HMSA is ready to roll up its sleeves and work with the new administration, Legislature, doctors, hospitals, nurses, drug companies, employers, labor unions and, most importantly, consumers to map out a plan for Hawai'i's future healthcare system. This plan will undoubtedly require sacrifices by us all.

And we, as a community, must come to an understanding and agreement on the direction we want our state to move in.

We all want to make sure our healthcare system maintains its national reputation. While tough times pose real challenges for our community, working together provides us with an invaluable opportunity to come together and make healthcare better for all of Hawai'i's people.