Hospital CEOs say law needed [South Bend Tribune, Ind.]

March 28--The chief executive officers of two area health care systems would like to see the Supreme Court uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Supreme Court convened Tuesday for the second day of arguments on the controversial law. Tuesday's session was to deal with whether Congress has the power to require most people in the United States to buy medical insurance.

Al Gutierrez, CEO of Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center, believes "there's a high probability that the individual mandate (requiring most Americans to have health insurance) is constitutional and the affordable health care act is upheld."

He thinks there's a moderate chance the individual mandate would be ruled unconstitutional, with much of the rest of the 1,300-page law being upheld. He believes the chances are extremely low that the new law would be overturned completely.

Phil Newbold, CEO of Memorial Health System and Elkhart General Healthcare System, also believes the law will be upheld.

"Many of the influential lower courts have ruled that the individual mandate is something that is under the commerce laws and would be appropriate for this piece of legislation, that we ought to leave Congress to sort of battle these things out," Newbold said. "And we have, and they passed a piece of legislation that it looks like we're going to have to live with, so many of us are just beginning to prepare for that."

Additionally, for the plan to work, healthy Americans need to be a part of it, too, Newbold said. The controversial mandate states that most people must obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty.

"You have to have healthy people as well as sick people to spread the risk to a vast number of people," Newbold said. "And without that mandate, healthy people would opt out and with little or no penalty, the system is just not sustainable. We really think that having everybody in that system makes all of that work."

He, too, would prefer to see it upheld.

"When you're 17 (percent) to 18 percent of the gross domestic product, there's enough money in the system as a whole that everybody should be covered," Newbold said. "It's become in a very Western-civilized medicine system that most other countries have found a way to cover almost all of the citizens. And to have spent that much money and not cover 40 to 50 million Americans, it seems like there's enough to go around for universal coverage."

In fact, Newbold is concerned if the law were struck down, what would happen next.

"I think it's very important that they do uphold it because if this part of the legislation is struck down, we are going to have to go virtually right back to square one," he said. "And there's nothing I've seen in the last couple years of Congress that would lead you to believe with the gridlock between the two parties that they'll ever agree to anything to replace it.

"Then we'll be in the same situation with having an awful lot of Americans outside the system still show up in hospitals' emergency rooms, show up after the fact when their illnesses or injuries have progressed."

It's very expensive to treat people that late in the process, he added, as opposed to trying to get them a primary care physician where they have some access to preventative services.

"So, it's really important that we get people covered and into a system," Newbold said.

Gutierrez agrees that now is the time for some type of major change in health care.

"We've acknowledged that health care cannot continue to occupy upwards of 17 percent of the gross domestic product and still leave many people without insurance behind," Gutierrez said.

"We all believe we're ripe for an intervention, that we're now priced beyond the reach of most Americans, that something major needs to be done and the timing's right.

"And if nothing gets done, then we go back to the drawing board," Gutierrez added, "and that puts us into the election season with another very large national debate that takes time, effort and energy when we have a problem today."

He acknowledged that those election results could also lead to a repeal of the act, depending on how they go.

Staff writer Jim Meenan: jmeenan@sbtinfo.com 574-235-6342

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