West Michigan Association of Health Underwriters

Transcript:

Corriveau: Well, you know, I have been at this for quite some time.  And the effort that has gone into releasing a plan that is comprehensive and that is great for the whole state of Michigan has been a struggle but we've reached out to every corner of this state and every group of this state to ask them where it is that this state should be going.  I have with me Mary Ablan who represents seniors with the Area Agency on Aging and she's just a good example of listening and learning and coming up with a plan that is best for everyone here in the state of Michigan.  Representative Meadows touched on some of the major hallmarks of but I do think they bear re-mentioning.
 
This plan is founded in the idea that we are going to guarantee access for every resident here in Michigan.  No more will an insurance company be able to look at you and reject because you have diabetes or reject you because you have cancer or reject you because you have asthma.  And no longer will they be able to take away or jack up your rates once you get one of these problems.  This plan all works based on this Michigan Catastrophic Protection Plan which will relieve the high-end burden from an individual person and put it into a fund that can be paid.  In addition, for the first time this State is going to have the means to offer coverage for every child here in the state of Michigan.  We are taking the tax exempt value of our non-profits and we're going to be putting it into a Michigan Healthy Fund so that we can cover every child and, again, provide a subsidy for people who cannot afford insurance.  Right now we have approximately 1.2 million people here in the state of Michigan that are uninsured and that number is growing.  Why is that happening?  Well people are losing their jobs and they're also having their coverage dropped by small businesses who have told me over and over again that it is being a bigger and bigger burden on them to provide this for their employees.  
 
So what this plan does is address a lot of the problems and they are a lot of them and time after time as I spoke to seniors, or hospitals, or doctors, or nurses or carriers they would come into my office and say if we could just do this we could help save money, if we could just do that we could reduce the cost of health insurance for everybody.  
 
So in addition to these bold, in front - out-in-front moves that Michigan is going to be doing, we're also going to be going after reducing the cost of health care to this state.  We are going to be dropping bills that go after e-prescription and making sure that that is done in the state of Michigan and we're going to be doing bulk purchasing to make sure that we can provide our drugs at an affordable rate for everybody and we're also going to be doing things like advanced directives.  The hospitals told me privately, you know, if they just knew what type of care an individual needed or wanted for that matter or didn't want, probably, is the best way, we could save hundreds of millions of dollars so you'll see us drop a bill about having people fill out an advanced directive if they wish so that we know how to care for them in the unfortunate case of an accident.  This plan is for everyone.  The state of Michigan is going to lead the nation in this regard and I think that the plan that we've put together is bold, as I indicated, and strong and it guarantees access for everybody.  
 
I'd be more than willing to talk about aspects of the plan if you wish, but this is about people.  And I've spent the last tow years figuring out what's the best for people and this plan does that and I'm proud to present it to the Legislature and I'm hopeful that this will be a bi-partisan, bi-cameral effort to solve our problems.