By DAVID A. MANN
David.Mann@newsandtribune.com
JEFFERSONVILLE —
U.S. Rep. Baron Hill recalled the peculiar question recently posed to him by an elderly woman at a New Albany McDonald’s: “If I’m sick and go to the hospital, is it true that the government will now give me a pill to take to go home and die?”
It was a genuine question, said Hill, noting the resident wasn’t being at all facetious.
And although it was an extreme case, Hill said there are such concerns circulating amongst the public since Congress passed a health care reform package earlier this year. Many senior citizens believe their Medicare benefits are going away, he said.
“It’s not true,” he said, arguing that the bill improved the program by closing a gap in prescription drug costs, referred to as “the doughnut hole.”
“It’s doing a lot of good things but there’s still a lot of misinformation,” he said.
Hill’s comments were made during a discussion of the legislation with some of the staff of Wellstone Regional Hospital, a mental health care facility in Jeffersonville. The congressman and members of the staff toured the facility Tuesday, getting a look at a new geriatric wing, a new cafeteria and other areas of the 100-bed hospital. After the tour, he sat down with staff, discussing industry trends.
John Ambers, the hospital’s clinical director of outpatient and addiction services, told the Democratic Indiana congressman that in recent years, managed-care companies have increasingly cut funding for mental health services. Fewer and fewer in-patient care days are being offered for addiction treatment, he told Hill.
He argued that a person can go out and eat fast food and be treated for any ensuing heart problems, yet when it comes to receiving alcohol and substance abuse help, some managed-care companies will give a person only one attempt in a lifetime to break an addiction.
Further, Roger McGee, the hospital’s director of utilization management, questioned whether the bill would hold managed-care companies accountable on dictating how long a patient can stay at a facility.
Hill didn’t have the answer to that specific question.
However, he said the bill was designed to make the health care system more patient-friendly and give physicians and psychiatrists more latitude in such decisions.
Additionally, he said some of the results of the bill are still a work in progress — decisions yet to be made by the secretary of Health and Human Services. He said he would pass the concerns they expressed on to those making decisions in Washington, D.C.
Health care reform was a major piece of the Obama administration’s agenda. The bill, called the Affordable Care Act, came on a close vote after months of debate between Republicans and Democrats.
