Senator discusses health care

The football team, acronyms and health care reform were the main subjects of Rhode Island Senator John Chafee's speech yesterday at Dunlop Auditorium in Stemmler Hall. Chafee, who said he was a "loyal Brown fan," began his remarks by commending the Quakers on their Ivy League football championship. But the main thrust of his speech centered around health care reform, an issue in which he has been instrumental over the last several years. Chafee spoke yesterday as the 1994 Visiting Health Policy Fellow with the University's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Chafee has been a senator since 1976. He has chaired the Senate Republican Task Force on Health Care Reform and is expected to chair the subcommittee on health within the Senate Finance Committee. Yesterday, he spoke to more than 100 students, faculty, staff and visitors about the past, present and future of health care reform. In his half-hour speech, Chafee commented on the history of health care reform and the most recent attempts to pass health care legislation, which he said began in 1990. A bipartisan group, whose aim was to discuss and deal with health care reform, was formed and an educational seminar was held each Thursday morning to learn about the various "complicated" aspects of health care, he said. In 1993, Chafee and several others introduced the HEART bill, standing for Health, Equity and Access Reform Today. And beginning last November, Chafee formed and is now leading a bi-partisan group called the Mainstream Coalition that attempted to create a compromise on health care legislation. Chafee said he and the Coalition have two basic goals, one of which is to extend health insurance coverage to those who do not currently have it. He added that 15 percent of Americans do not have health insurance. His plan is to cover 94 percent of all Americans by the end of the century. The Coalition's second goal is "to make sure that we could do something about cost containment," specifically with holding down costs involved with Medicare and Medicaid. "I hope we don't lose sights of those points," Chafee said. "We better do something." Chafee's plan proposes a $1 cigarette tax to pay for insuring more Americans, along with a proposal to prevent companies from denying insurance based on pre-existing conditions. When discussing "what went wrong" with health care legislation before Congress ended its session, Chafee discounted theories that "time caught up with them" and that the failure was due to a multitude of secret meetings. "The country wasn't ready for these massive regulations," he said. "It wasn't just that Harry and Louise didn't like it, the American public didn't like it." Chafee said President Clinton's original health care plan "overreached" because the president wanted the government involved in "anything" to do with health care. Chafee chided the Democrats for their "arrogance" and lack of regard for the American public. Even before Senator George Mitchell (D-Maine) introduced a last-minute bill in August, Chafee said, "it was clear that it wasn't going anywhere." He said he thinks the chances of a health care bill passing in 1995 are "stronger than 50-50." "I think it's still at the top of the president's agenda," he said, although he noted that differences in opinion exist within the Republican members of Congress, and between the two parties. After he spoke, Chafee took questions from the crowd. "The Senate is very, very proud of medical education in the U.S.," Chafee said in response to a question about the future of medical schools and programs. "There is strong support for making sure that that quality won't disappear." LDI's Associate Director for Communications Jennifer Conway said Chafee's remarks were very applicable to the University. "Penn has one of the major teaching hospitals and has a major interest in health reform especially as it pertains to teaching hospitals," she said. Students attending the event said they gained a great deal from it. "He's willing to look beyond the parties," said second-year Medical student Ed Pensa, who is from Rhode Island. "He is making the ideas of the health care movement as a whole central."