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CEO of Drug Company Urges National Health Insurance System

Posted on: Monday, 17 April 2006, 21:00 CDT

WASHINGTON _ Jean-Pierre Garnier, the Philadelphia-based chief executive officer of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C., said Monday that the government should enact a system of national health insurance as a way to broaden access to treatment and reduce costs.

In a speech here before other health-care executives, Garnier said a national health insurance system is financially within reach of the United States. He said it would help pay for itself by providing timely medical intervention to people who currently don't get it.

He suggested in an interview after the speech that it might function like the system recently enacted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There, all people will be required to carry a catastrophic, or bare-bones, health insurance policy starting in July 2007 aimed at covering only the most severe ailments, or face fines and other financial penalties.

Such policies typically cost far less than full health coverage.

"Now I am not (recommending) national insurance that pays for everything and anything," Garnier said in his speech. Rather, he said such a system would serve as a safety net for those between jobs, workers whose employers don't provide insurance, and others without coverage.

Such a system would be run by private entities like health insurers, and would be partly financed by redirecting money spent by insurers and the government to pay for care of uninsured people who end up in hospital emergency rooms for treatment, said Garnier.

That is how the Massachusetts insurance system will be structured. The state plans to use money it currently spends to provide medical care for the uninsured to subsidize coverage for low-income families. But families with incomes of $60,000 or more would get no assistance.

Garnier said that, under his idea, the delivery of health care by doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and other players in the system would remain under private control.

"We are paying for it now," he said.

Each year, tens of millions of Americans find themselves without health coverage, causing many to go without care or to obtain care in hospital emergency rooms. Many delay seeking treatment until their ailments are far advanced, further undermining their health and adding financial burdens to the system. Many health-care analysts believe that providing coverage to this group eventually would lower overall costs by insuring that they obtain treatment earlier and that they get it outside of hospitals, where costs are highest.

"What you have now is, you have gaps in the system; some people have insurance, but very often it is not portable," Garnier said. "What you create is a safety net ... essentially everyone must have insurance; like car insurance, it becomes mandatory. We need it if we want to eliminate the tragedy of lack of access and the inefficiencies created by a lack of insurance."

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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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