A week after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in which he mentioned the topic of jobs at least four times more than health care, EBA’s health reform panelists reflect on what the president’s new focus could mean for the health care debate moving forward.

“Not only has the president’s focus shifted from health reform to jobs, his State of the Union remarks were vague regarding what he will accept as reform,” says Diane Boyle, vice president of federal government relations, National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors. “NAIFA hopes that the components the president has in mind for health insurance reforms are provisions NAIFA can support. Virtually all Americans want health care reform, but there are disagreements on what constitutes reform. NAIFA stands ready to offer our ideas for reform to the president and Congress.”

The speech reflected the president’s understanding of the importance of “playing to the people,” says Andrew Butler, president, Iowa’s Butler Benefit Service. “While he spent a great deal of time focusing on the need for job creation, his position on our country’s need for his health reform did not change. I felt that he still suffers from a cataclysmic knowledge vacuum when it comes to the real factors driving the cost of health care in our country and that he really believes he knows better than anyone how to fix the problems,” says Butler.  

For Dave Lapka, president of logistics consulting company D360, the speech realized his worst fears “that all this president seeks is a partisan national takeover of health care.”

Lapka refers to Obama’s remarks on health care reform during the speech as one of the root causes of the health insurance cost problem: “The approach we’ve taken would protect every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry,” Obama said. “It would give small businesses and uninsured Americans a chance to choose an affordable health care plan in a competitive market. It would require every insurance plan to cover preventive care.”

But, the cost of any insurance is proportional to the number and cost of claims, Lapka continues. For example, the auto insurance industry allows for cost reductions by raising deductibles, which in turn reduces the number of claims filed as people attempt to avoid an increase in their premium. If this rationale is applied to health care, “when people start paying for their own checkups, the flu, backaches, etc. — not requiring the filing of a thousand forms — the costs will go down, and the insurance will be significantly cheaper,” says Lapka.

Meanwhile, Tom Schuetz, co-president of Iowa’s Group Services, questions the president’s commitment to health care reform now that prospects for its success have diminished. “A roadblock has been identified and all of a sudden it’s maybe not so important,” says Schuetz. “It’s likely there will still be attempts to make some changes but a strategy of biting off small chunks rather that eating the entire candy bar in one bite is likely to emerge. We’ll have to wait and see.”

Schuetz would still like to see some type of health care reform pass, but one that doesn’t introduce more government controls. “Every time the marketplace moves toward a solution the government steps in and starts to regulate and any potential positive results are gone,” he says. “The bottom line, each of us needs to reduce our dependence on the health care system by taking better care of ourselves and making better decisions or the system will implode.”

As reform slows down on the federal level, Schuetz cautions to keep an eye on state activity: “Over time states have enacted a tremendous number of coverage mandates that create a huge burden on insurance company pricing.”

Regardless, federal reform “is not dead,” says, Kris Marohn, administrator with McCall, Parkhurst & Horton in Dallas, who takes heart in the fact that Obama made a point of encouraging Republicans to bring him any new ideas on the topic, rather than denouncing current legislation. “He also mentioned that by the time he finishes his speech many more people will lose their health care coverage, and others will face bankruptcy, even with health coverage, because of the current system,” says Marohn. “We can’t let this issue die, so we have to keep the heat on Washington to get it done.”