Senate candidate hosts medical roundtable

By Kathleen Quilligan

CROWN POINT | Local medical professionals painted a less than rosy picture of what may happen with the implementation of the national health care overhaul bill at a roundtable Wednesday morning.

The roundtable was hosted by Dan Coats, a Republican former U.S. senator who is running for the Senate seat U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., is leaving vacant. Coats will face U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., for the seat.

Wednesday marked exactly three months since President Barack Obama signed the health care bill that will restructure American health care, and those gathered at St. Anthony Medical Center on Wednesday morning seemed worried about the impact of the bill, which won’t go into effect until 2014.

“We’re playing a guessing game here,” family practitioner Troy Stovall said. “How are we supposed to know what the impact will be to us.”

Eduardo Fletes, a doctor of internal medicine, expressed concern about how to properly care for the high volume of patients that could be coming in.

“I wonder if there are a limited number of office spots, if patients will be referred to the emergency room anyway,” Fletes said.

Funding the bill almost immediately came up during the discussion.

“It’s the gorilla in the room,” Stovall said. “We can’t afford this particular indication. It becomes an unfunded mandate.”

According to numbers released in May, the cost is between $2.9 billion and $3.6 billion in Indiana. The entire reform is estimated to cost $940 billion during the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Other physicians at the discussion lamented the probable lack of autonomy with the bill and worried that their values, as far as how they like to treat patients, might be compromised because of requirements from the government.

The members of the roundtable worried there would be a doctor shortage for fields such as family medicine, that don’t pay as well as a more specialized field, especially if the doctors are heavily regulated by the government. The doctors suggested incentives such as forgiving medical school loans to help make the field more attractive to schools’ top students.

Coats’ spokesman said the roundtable participants were selected by the hospital.