Staff Writer

PRINCETON-At a time where many have to decide if they are sick enough to swallow the cost of getting medical attention, some are looking for ways to make healthcare more affordable for Hoosiers.

Jeanne Labrecque, Indiana Family and Social Services Agency director of health policy and Medicaid, led a public discussion concerning health care affordability Monday at Gibson General Hospital.

Labrecque said Indiana has the highest per capita rate of people who declare medical bankruptcies - about 77,000 residents. Medical bankruptcy occurs when a family is faced with a medical expense they cannot afford.

Labrecque said depending on the survey, between 9-14 percent of Hoosiers are uninsured. When translated to population figures, that's between 561,000 and 868,800 people.

Such a large number of uninsured citizens cause insurance premiums to rise, she said, because insurance providers have to subsidize ways to pay for uninsured. Insurance providers use $950 of a family's annual insurance premium to pay for uninsured residents. From a single person, $375 a year goes to subsidize uninsured patients.

Medicaid is tough to receive, Labrecque said. To qualify for Medicaid, a family of four must be 100 percent within the federal poverty level - which translates to an annual income of less than $20,000.

Labrecque said due to federal mandates, each person on Medicaid received the same benefit care package regardless or age, gender or need.

She hopes that will soon change since the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) of 2005 was passed by Congress. The DRA allows for case sensitive Medicaid packages.

Less than favorable economic conditions have caused many Hoosiers to lose insurance coverage in recent years.

Between the 2000 and 2004, Indiana lost 138,800 jobs, and food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) more than double in the last five years.

Also not helping the situation, Hoosiers have some of the worst health habits in the nation, Labrecque said. Indiana ranks second in the number of smokers and ninth in obesity.

State Rep. Troy Woodruff said these reasons prompted him to ask the FSSA to conduct a public forum in Princeton.

&#8220Southern Indiana has a lot of smokers and a lot of children who take a lot of medicine," he said. &#8220We need to take personal responsibility for ourselves and start thinking about lifestyle changes that can lead to solutions."

Labrecque said Indiana is also losing physicians because older doctors that have been rural community staples are retiring, and younger doctors are opting for larger salaries in more densely populated areas.

Greg Schulten, chief financial officer at Gibson General Hospital, said due to the increased demands on healthcare professionals to pursue higher avenues of education, it costs more money to pay them.

Schulten said education barriers have turned many willing people away from the medical profession. Colleges and universities have set quotas on the number of students they are willing to take into their programs each year.

Like many states, Indiana is beginning to look at healthcare reform.

Woodruff said a reform plan is in the works and will be presented to the Indiana General Assembly before the end of the year. &#8220The key question is how to fund it," Woodruff said.

Several states, like Massachusetts and Michigan, are in the beginning stages of developing ways to make healthcare more affordable, but Labrecque said reforms are still in infancy stages and have yet to be proven. Pending legislation, Indiana will also begin taking baby-steps to improve its healthcare affordability.

She said the state is cautious about implementing wide-scale healthcare reform because in other states broad sweeping movements to provide affordable health care caused more damage than those caused by Indiana's current system.

&#8220Sometimes the cure is worse than the problem," she said.