MA gubernatorial debate on CBS4 news: on Health Care

Chris Gabrieli: Apply subsidized healthcare to municipal employees

GABRIELI: Good benefits is an important part of state jobs, it’s part of how people are recruited to it. I think we’re pretty close to the right place. But I will focus on municipal employees; the rate of growth on their healthcare costs is going much faster than state employees. I think that we could sit at the table, not be antagonistic, but sit at the table with collective bargaining, and say we need to get more of this money to work in our classrooms, out on the street in form of policemen and firemen, and so we’ve got to be smart about it. The group health insurance group that represents the state employees, they do some really smart things. I think that that kind of constructive smart approach can be used more broadly.

Deval Patrick: Pursue cost-savings ideas within new health reform mandate

PATRICK: I think we need to be managing down the cost of healthcare for everybody. We have an opportunity--and indeed a mandate--with that new health reform bill. Some of the ideas that I want to pursue are:

• How we make uniform the forms for reimbursement. Every payer has a different protocol.
• How we use our technology to maintain patient records. Within a hospital, they manage and move the records around electronically but they don’t have the capability yet to talk to providers outside that bubble.
• How to be smarter about purchasing strategies for prescription drugs.

Tom Reilly: Experienced with saving struggling hospitals

REILLY: For the past eight years, I’ve been working to save the health insurance for over a million people with the Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare plan when that company was going under. Saving and turning around struggling hospitals, so I understand that system. I’m the only one with that kind of experience going into this race. The next governor better know something about healthcare. We can’t continue like this because of the cost of healthcare. We have to make it more affordable. I know where to start, cutting those administrative costs, 1/3 of the amount of money that’s spent on our healthcare delivery system is spent on administrative overhead--those forms going back and forth, endless waste of money--we have to change it. Government can drive that change, we’re the largest purchaser of health insurance.