Many in the audience at the Landon Lecture at K-State were proud to welcome Kathleen Sebelius to the podium Monday. It isn’t often that a Kansan — even an adopted one — rises so high in Washington. So the applause was appropriately long and enthusiastic for the former two-term governor.
But the mood was sober and attentive as Sebelius, now Secretary of Health and Human Services, expressed hope that support for the health care bill she helped to write would grow as more and more Americans understood what was in the complex law.
She said the public already supports eliminating the life-time limits on health care benefits that are now in some health insurance policies, agrees with the changes already made that provides coverage for children up to the age of 26 and requires coverage of children with pre-existing conditions.
She also explained that the requirement that everyone have health insurance or pay into a pool was necessary. Without such a requirement, people wouldn’t buy health insurance until they got sick, she said. Pointing out that car owners are required by law to have liability insurance, she said it wouldn’t work well if no one bought insurance until they had a wreck.
Then Sec. Sebelius turned philosophical and said, “health is really about freedom. When we live longer, healthier lives, we have more time to do our jobs, more time to volunteer in our neighborhoods, play with our children and watch our grandchildren grow up.”
The object of the health care bill is to change the U.S. system from providing “sick care” to one that helps Americans lead healthier lives. There are, she said, little-known emphases in the new law which pursue that goal: expanded cancer research; information technology; medical countermeasures to biological attack or pandemic disease outbreak; reducing obesity in the population.
She expanded on each of these. Research now being done by the National Institutes of Health — where, it must be emphasized, most of the breakthroughs in medical knowledge achieved in the U.S. are accomplished — continues to find new, effective ways to cure some cancers, and will achieve even greater success against the second largest (after heart disease) killer if it is given the resources to do so.
Information technology means shifting from paper patient records to electronic records. When this is accomplished, there will be far fewer errors made in patient care and treatment and money will be saved along with lives. The new Allen County Hospital will be 100 percent electronic.
Reducing the incidence of obesity can be accomplished, she said, by increasing public awareness of the connection between being overweight and developing heart disease, increased risk of stroke and contracting diabetes, a life-threatening disease. The campaign includes requiring the food industry to do a better job of labeling so that consumers find it easier to make good choices in the grocery store.
SEBELIUS praised K-State and others in Kansas who successfully won the contract for bringing a federal animal disease research center to its campus and said it will play a part in countering any effort by America’s enemies to launch biological attacks and observed that the Institutes of Health, and the nation’s other medical research facilities, will play a similar role in preparing against biological attacks against humans and to control and contain pandemic diseases such as influenza.
In answer to questions, she said she expected the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the health care bill’s insurance requirement to be settled eventually by the Supreme Court but predicted that it would be found constitutional. She also agreed that the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives may pass a bill to repeal the health care law, but surmised that if it passed the Senate it would be vetoed by President Obama.
In brief remarks after a luncheon following the lecture, she showed the sense of humor that helped her keep her balance and perspective when working with Republican majorities in the Kansas Legislature and should be a life-saver in Washington, D.C.:
“I really don’t like my new title, Madam Secretary, “ she said. “I don’t have the skills to be a secretary and I never wanted to be a madam.”
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
