Let’s follow California’s lead on health care costs

Guest Column - The Capital Times
April 2, 2008

By now we know that solving Wisconsin’s ever-growing home health care costs is a multifaceted problem and will not be solved by any single solution. And while there are many comprehensive solutions being proposed, none of them go directly to the core issue---monolithic and predatory health care pharmaceutical pricing practices.

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.

When we weigh the billions and billions of dollars to be both made and saved through miracle cures of our worse most debilitating diseases and by 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 and importance of the health care policy issue now before us.

Californians have learned their lessons well from our nation’s health care problems 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.

Wisconsin citizens should follow California’s lead and pass legislation now that supports federal and state funding of stem cell research in Wisconsin along with public health care benefit safeguards.

“Public health care benefit safeguards” can mean anything from requiring a successful grantee to return 25 percent of their profit back on their billion-dollar stem cell-based drug discovery to the state of Wisconsin to be put in a special patient health care fund.

Or a successful grantee would simply be required to 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 as Wisconsin citizens can prove to ourselves and our grandchildren, and future generations, 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.