A panel of experts were supposed to talk about advancements and innovation when they took the stage at a Detroit Economic Club meeting earlier this month.
Corewell Health CEO Tina Freese Decker, Henry Ford Health CEO Bob Riney and Eric Langur, the founder and managing partner of Abundant Venture Partners, were there to talk about things like AI and other innovations in the health care industry.
But with a shutdown beginning the same day (it’s now in its third week), moderator Robin Erb, the senior health reporter for Bridge Magazine, steered the conversation quickly to the expiration of Obamacare subsidies over which the shutdown occurred.
“So much of (the shutdown) is about healthcare, so let’s open it up there,” Erb told the panel.
Riney pointed out that providing basic health insurance is “what we’re fighting about,” and pointed out that ending the subsidies and possibly causing millions of people to lose their health coverage won’t, in the end, really save any money.
“Reduction of insured individuals does not save any money,” Riney said. “That’s not a political statement … it’s a math fact. The reality is we have an obligation to provide care, so people will show up in the ER like the old days, and that’s the most expensive portal.”
Decker, who helped orchestrate the 2022 merger of Beaumont and Spectrum Health, agrees the health care system needs “significant transformation.”
“What’s happening is all the patches that have occurred to keep healthcare where it is today are being removed right now,” she said. “Some of those patches shouldn’t be patches. We have to figure out how to provide healthcare to our country in a more affordable way, in a simpler way, in an equitable way.”
Decker said such a transformation could take years, and time is needed to “drive that (transformation) forward.” Ending the subsidies (they’re set to expire at the end of the year), she said, takes away from that mission.
She agreed with Riney that it won’t slow the need to provide health care, but just shift it back to the way it used to be done.
“Just stopping things will then go to less preventive care and more ER utilization, which will drive the cost up,” Decker said. “We have to be less transactional and more transformational to figure out what we want to accomplish and put those into place.
“They’re going to be hard, bold decisions that we’re going to do to change and transform healthcare,” she added. “But let’s do that and move it forward.”
Riney, who has been with Henry Ford Health for more than 45 years, doesn’t like the idea the government has shut down over healthcare issues.
“I’m actually frustrated that it’s about healthcare, that the richest country in the world is lagging most developed countries in providing basic insurance … for its citizens is what we’re fighting about.”
Langur, who holds a master’s degree from the Columbia Business School, sees an opportunity to improve the way both sides are addressing the issue and each other.
“This is an opportunity for us to zoom way out, look in the mirror as citizens in this country and think about the discourse that’s happening and our role in it,” Langur said. “And if we can’t, in our communities, find middle ground with the people that really matter to us, it is not surprising that we’re getting this outcome from our elected officials.”
