A Public Health Care Benefit for All Wisconsin Citizens

This presentation was given by William R. Benedict at the Wisconsin Coalition for Aging Groups District 1 Spring Senior Issues Forum

I too want to thank you for being here and for giving me this opportunity this morning to speak to you about the most important and neglected health care policy issue now facing our nation and the State of Wisconsin.

In 2005 my partner and I were vacationing in San Diego California. While reading the San Diego Tribune I just happened to read about California’s 3 billion dollar stem cell research program and about the many health care stakeholder groups who all were fighting for something they were calling a “public benefit.”

I continued to read and soon learned what they meant by the words, public benefit. They wanted to make sure that medical breakthroughs and medicines developed through stem cell research, and funded by their tax dollars, would be available and affordable to every citizen in California.

I learned that the baby boomers and our children’s lives will be literally transformed in terms of the eradication of our most debilitating diseases – Parkinson, diabetes, Alzheimer, cerebral palsy and heart disease, to mention just a few.

When we weigh the billions and billions of dollars to be both made and saved with such life enhancements as restored memory, increased mobility, regenerated body parts, and most of all, increased longevity, only then can we begin to appreciate the real scope of the health policy issue now before us.

Californians have learned their lessons well from our nation’s health care issue and have decided to go directly to the root of our health care pricing crisis. They are no longer going to pay twice for their health care: Once for the research and once again for the exorbitantly priced medications and therapies.

I propose that each of you and this Coalition adopt the following simple policy statement that will set in motion a major policy shift in how health care pricing practices are viewed in Wisconsin from this day forward. .

“The Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups supports legislation for federal and state funding of stem cell research along with public health care benefit safeguards.”

“Public health care benefit safeguards” can mean anything from requiring a grantee to return twenty-five percent of their profit back to the state of Wisconsin to be put in a special patient health care fund. Or a potential grantee could simply submit a plan to ensure affordable prices for all Wisconsin citizens, especially the medium and low income and underserved populations.

The bottom line is that you and I can prove to ourselves and our grandchildren that we have learned our lesson from exorbitant health care pricing. We have learned not to give our money to people without first asking who they are, why they need it, and how they plan on using it. This new policy of asking the public funded grantee to meet certain expectations and provide some return on our investment is better than writing a blank check and continuing with health care in Wisconsin as we now know it.

A Stem Cell Funding Health Care Benefit Safeguard Is Proposed

Recently Federal Trade Commissioner, Jon Leibowitz wrote, “Getting health care costs under control is a daunting and multifaceted challenge.” As a family member with several stem cell diseases Leibowitz emphasized that there is no one solution to fixing our health care crisis.

He then went on to report how pharmaceutical companies collude with their competitors to keep lower generic alternatives to prescription drugs off the market and how the commission plans to ban such “pay-for-delay” settlements.

Leibowitz is challenging all citizens and health care consumers who are waiting for a single payer universal health care plan to arrive must meanwhile continue to take steps to bring about more accessible and affordable health care to all our citizens. In this spirit I want to propose another simple approach that would save health care consumers billions of dollars annually.

To date we have been promised only indirect trickle-down economic effects, including more jobs and a higher tax base from our support. While this is a worthy and much needed economic benefit, it alone is far too narrow and short sighted. If Wisconsin is to effectively manage its ever escalating and exorbitant health care costs we must act now.

A genuine public health care benefit for public funding of stem cell research can range from a percentage of biotech profits beyond a certain threshold to simply ensuring that drug costs and other stem therapies in Wisconsin will be managed and made at reasonable costs to all our citizens. Other public interests policy concerns have to do with whether medication discounts are to be given to low and medium income patients and other underserved groups?

Will Wisconsin taxpayers have any say to help ensure that such stem cell funding targets prioritized disease groups such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and sickle cell anemia versus pursuing products that have only short-term commercial and cosmetic benefits?

Millions of our state tax dollars have already been spent and more have been added to this year’s biennium budget without any such consumer safeguards. State innovation grants, tax credits and a host of other public financial incentives are being invested and now are in the state administrative pipeline.

Asking grantees to do the right thing after giving away the farm is like asking the fox to cough up the chickens after giving him the key to the hen house. If these stem cell policy concerns are not already on your civic or health care organization’s radar screen and advocacy agenda such neglect could be catastrophic for Wisconsin health care consumers.

The fundamental policy questions that you and your organization should be asking is should your organization support legislation for federal and state funding of stem cell research with public health care payback safeguards?

Respectfully yours,

William R. Benedict,
Madison.