Praise, caution voiced in local reaction to health speech

President Barack Obama's prime time speech on health care received high marks from two North Coast Democratic members of Congress, local business people and a hospital official, along with jolts of criticism from a Santa Rosa insurance broker and a Republican Party leader.

“He gave us our marching orders,” Rep. Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma said, calling Obama's plan a prescription for health care change that will “last for many generations to come.”

Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena said the president made a “compelling argument” for remaking the system that costs the nation $2.5 trillion a year.

“I think health care reform is going to happen,” Thompson said, predicting that Congress will approve a bill by the end of the year.

Both lawmakers said they were satisfied with Obama's description of the public option, a government-administered health plan the president said could be included along with private plans in a national insurance exchange.

Thompson said it would be “one option of many” offered to provide individual and group health care coverage.

But the president's claim that his plan — costing $900 billion over 10 years — would not be subsidized by taxpayers irked David Hodges, a Santa Rosa insurance broker.

“You can't insure 40 million people and have it be deficit-neutral,” said Hodges, who sells group plans to businesses and other organizations.

Obama's proposal to pay for the plan by curbing Medicare waste and fraud and by imposing a fee on expensive health plans is unrealistic, Hodges said.

“It doesn't add up,” he said. “I think that's going to cause him trouble.”

Hodges applauded several parts of Obama's plan, including mandated insurance coverage, capping out-of-pocket expenses and prohibiting the denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Requiring nearly all citizens to be insured is “the only thing that will lower costs,” Hodges said.

Mike Harris, a former Sonoma County Republican Party chairman, dismissed the president's 48-minute speech as “just more platitudes and campaign rhetoric.”

The public option “will trap tens of millions of people in a system of substandard care,” Harris said, blasting the health care change embraced by liberals.

Tax incentives, tort reform and free-market principles should be the basis of a revamped health care system, he said.

Harris credited Obama with briefly mentioning tort reform, involving limits on medical malpractice lawsuits that Harris said would be “one of the first steps to rein in health care costs.”

David Proctor, chief financial officer for Friedman's Home Improvement, endorsed the proposed insurance mandate, saying it would “pick up the costs” for the millions of uninsured people who get health care at hospital emergency rooms.

Obama said the cost, which he called a “hidden tax,” adds $1,000 per year to family insurance premiums.

Proctor said he would prefer not to see the public option come about. “I hope it doesn't come to that,” Proctor said, expressing preference for private industry plans achieving universal coverage.

Proctor also noted that Republicans in the House chamber applauded Obama's call for tort reform to curb medical malpractice costs, which he said businesses need.

Sue Nelson, chief operating officer of the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, said Obama's plan matched three principles for health care overhaul adopted by the business organization.

The chamber believes that “consumers do better with choice and competition,” Nelson said, and that health care should be provided “primarily by using private insurers.”

The chamber also believes that the practice of disqualifying people for pre-existing conditions should be ended.

Chris Manson, a St. Joseph Health System official specializing in government relations and public policy, seconded the need for “improved access” to health care, enabling people to get regular medical care rather than resorting to emergency rooms when they are seriously ill.

“Success for us would be these people having insurance options,” Manson said. “That would be our litmus test.”

St. Joseph operates Santa Rosa Memorial and Petaluma Valley hospitals.

Thompson and Woolsey said the House's first order of business is to merge three committee-approved health care bills into one.

Ultimately, they said, a conference committee will fuse House and Senate bills into a single measure.

Woolsey said that Obama's repeated call for bipartisan action fell mostly on deaf Republican ears. “I don't think they came along very far, if at all,” she said.

Republicans refrained from applauding some of Obama's remarks, Woolsey said, and one called out “you lie” when the president said illegal immigrants would not be insured.

“That is unprecedented,” she said of the outburst.

Hodges said the president's plan must appeal to political moderates. “He's got the liberals; he'll never have the conservatives,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.