Commentary on Health Care submitted to www.change.gov
posted on December 15th, 2008
Barack Obama
Office of the President Elect
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. Obama:
The Upper Peninsula Children’s Coalition (UPCC) is happy to respond to your
requests for feedback regarding health care reform. The UPCC is a consortium of agencies and individuals from across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who have been working together since 1986 to identify children’s needs, promote their services and rights, and provide long-range planning for positive change. We maintain relationships with all policy-makers at the local, state, and federal level who represent the people of the Upper Peninsula. We are in frequent contact with our congressional representatives – Bart Stupak, Carl Levin, and Debbie Stabenow.
The current Legislative and Community Priorities of the UPCC identify “health care” as our number one priority for children and families living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We believe that barriers to health care for adults place a staggering burden on families and hinder effective parenting. Improving health care coverage for families has the potential to reduce many other economic and societal ills in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Accessible and affordable mental health and substance abuse services are critical to a healthy community.
In your request for feedback, you stated that you would like those of us offering our thoughts to be specific. To that end, the UPCC would like to offer two very specific suggestions.
First – the UPCC has a serious concern about the federal rule disqualifying jail inmates (which include juvenile detainees) from Medicaid eligibility. This places a tremendous burden on county budgets nationwide to provide health care and, more importantly, interferes with the health care system’s ability to provide an appropriate continuum of care. This is especially true in the case of mental health services. A large percentage of jail inmates and juvenile detainees could greatly benefit from mental health care but in order for that to be effective, a therapeutic relationship must be established, which is difficult or impossible if their coverage is interrupted or fragmented. Obviously, we are most specifically concerned about children in juvenile court systems having access to care from which they could benefit.
Second – in the United States, the bulk of mental health services are provided by social workers, particularly in rural communities. They have the ability to provide mental health care that is appropriate and effective, typically at a lower cost to both patient and insurer than traditional care by a psychologist. However, in Michigan, social workers in independent practice are unable to receive reimbursement for their services particularly by most of the Blue Cross Blue Shield policies in the State of Michigan. The UPCC would like to see improvements in the system that would make it easier for social workers to get reimbursed through insurers for mental health care that they provide. Without this service being available, many needy families are unable to receive mental health services which later may require more expensive inpatient treatment and further unnecessary suffering.
We are grateful for an opportunity to share our thoughts on health care (our top priority) and look forward to future opportunities to work with our elected officials to improve health care for all Americans.
Sincerely,
Paul Olson
Chair of the Upper Peninsula Children’s Coalition
CC: President Elect Barack Obama, Bart Stupak, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow
For more information about UPCC contact Paul Olson at 906-228-8919 ext. 29 or Cookie Aho at 906-360-7118
PO Box 881, Marquette, MI 49855 ~ Phone: (906)226-5138 ~ Fax: (906)226-5141
