Less than three weeks after being confirmed as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius has committed to visiting a Northern Kentucky heath care provider.
At the invitation of Northern Kentucky Congressman Geoff Davis, Sebelius said she will come to the region to learn more about a fledgling small business health insurance program being devised by HealthPoint Family Care.
HealthPoint operates medical and dental clinics in Bellevue and Covington and school-based programs in Covington, Erlanger, Elsmere, Silver Grove and Southgate.
Davis, a three-term Boone County Republican, suggested the visit when Sebelius testified before the House Ways and Means Committee.
“I’d like to invite you personally to come to Northern Kentucky ,” Davis told Sebelius, “and see some creative solutions that have been developed out of that old saw, ‘the greatest source of inspiration is desperation.’ ”
Sebelius, the former governor of Kansas, is a Cincinnati native and the daughter of John Gilligan, a Democrat who was a member of city council, served in Congress and was governor of Ohio.
“I’d be glad to do that,” Sebelius told Davis during the May 6 hearing. “Cincinnati is my hometown, birth town, with my dad and sister still there, so any opportunity to visit Covington provides a trip home.”
A spokesman in her Washington office confirmed on Friday that Sebelius will make the trip to Northern Kentucky “when her schedule allows.” No other details were available.
HealthPoint CEO Chris Goddard said he appreciated Davis’ taking the initiative to bring some focus and attention on his organization and the small business health plan.
“Congressman Davis has been a friend of HealthPoint,” Goddard said Friday. “He really does believe, as I do, in local solutions for local problems.”
HealthPoint launched a study of the program in concert with The Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, which received a $100,000 Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati grant to fund the study.
The University of Kentucky College of Public Affairs also is involved.
Goddard said the program is geared toward about 10 percent of the population that is “working but uninsured” and designed to focus on preventive care that keeps patients away from costly emergency room visits and hospital stays.
For about $600 a year, or $50 a month, workers would be given up to four visits to a primary care doctor, two dental visits and some acute care. Catastrophic coverage still would have to be provided by another plan or picked up by government-funded plans such as Medicaid.
“This is aimed strictly at providing low-cost primary care,” Goddard said. “There is a tremendous need by small business for some kind of relief. Many are in the position, because of costs, of reducing health care benefits or dropping them altogether.
“It is exciting to think there are additional, new options and solutions being considered,” he said.
Davis said during the committee hearing that the program may be able to move some workers out of federally funded programs.
HealthPoint’s small business plan may “remove the majority of our uninsured or underinsured in Northern Kentucky entirely off the grid of the federal system,” Davis said.
Sebelius said she is interested in learning more about the program.
“The effort for health care reform is aimed at stabilizing just that market,” she said. “So if you’ve got a strategy that’s working in Kentucky that is insuring previously uninsured folks, I think that … will hopefully lower the additional costs that those individuals, those Kentuckians, are paying for the uninsured care that’s currently coming through emergency room doors,” she said.
Watch Congressman Davis invite Secretary Sebelius to NKY HERE.
