KUCINICH: “I can’t say there was anything really new but the moment of decision and what he felt was at stake for our nation and for the hopes to make any kind of change down the road gave me more to think about it.”

Kucinich says the President did promise to work with him down the road on other reforms that he’d like to see happen. However, there was no commitment to create a public option. Kucinich has been a strong advocate for a government run plan.

Republican senate candidate Rob Portman released a statement timed to the President’s visit, calling the 2300-page proposal job-killing, and costly. He said, quote: “At a time of rising unemployment, we want jobs, not more big government proposals that are going to make it harder to get Ohio out of this economic crisis.”

Meanwhile, the President’s health care push is also getting some opposition from the left. Ohio congressmen John Boccieri and Dennis Kucinich are both on the fence about voting for the bill. Only Kucinich showed up for the rally, and when the president introduced him, an audience member shouted “vote yes.” But when asked by a reporter, Kucinich wouldn’t comment on his current position on the bill.

Strongsville tends to lean right. He lost to John McCain there by five percentage points. But the bulk of residents are independents, and John Green of the University of Akron says the trip could have a marginal effect if it can sway skeptical swing voters.

GREEN: The critical politics of the moment is to firm up support among Democrats. And to the extent that he can get independent-leaning voters to pay attention to Democrats, to maybe put pressure on Democratic members, then it could make a difference.

House Democrats are hoping to vote on the health care overhaul bill by the end of the week.

FRAZIER: There are 24 measures that they’re ranking on --It’s very easy to look item by item and then see what you’re ranking is and then look at that number and see how it compares to counties like yours. It can be useful because you can say, if smoking rates are tied to employment and low income and poor education programs in the schools to prevent smoking behaviors in the first place.  It’s a way to at least start a conversation like the ones people are having inside this room right now, about how these factors impact one another and how they’re tied to one another

CUDA:  In a conference room at Akron general hospital, fifty leaders in health care or health policy from more than half a dozen Northeast Ohio counties are sitting around tables comparing themselves to their peers, and brainstorming ways to improve. 

GROUP TALKING AT TABLE: We can find out what counties are number 1, number 2, number 3 on smoking cessation, find out what they are doing in order to reach those rates ... and I think that’s the whole purpose of this ....

CUDA: It’s all part of a workshop aimed at educating community leaders in the health care industry about how to use the ranking data to target areas of weakness their own communities.

TOTH:  This went way up this year - chlamydia rate almost doubled, obviously that’s an area we have to work with the high schoolers on that one.

CUDA: That’s Nancy Toth, a health educator from Lorain County.  She’s sitting at the same table as Najeebah Shine who directs the community outreach for the Cuyahoga County Board of Health.

SHINE: I think we could use it in our county to continue to have that conversation about how we have to move beyond clinical care because we’re ranked fairly high in clinical care but we have other areas where we need to do some work—

CUDA: Shine says that the data itself isn’t surprising, but it validates what she and others already know—namely building healthy communities requires more than doctors......

SHINE: we have to think of health as more than just health care. When you look at some of the other things that are included in this health ranking—for example graduation, poverty and unemployment if there is no additional resources to deal with those issues giving someone access is not enough—

CUDA: One of the most obvious patterns in the data is the strong association between income and health ranking.  Delaware county, which ranked healthiest, has one of the highest per capita incomes in the state, where as Lawrence and Scioto counties ranked worst, and are among the most impoverished counties. And as Sarah Gudz, of the Ohio State department of health points out, having a bad a ranking can be both a blessing and a curse…

GUDZ: Someone might genuinely say, what is my motivation for going to the county that ranks 88th? But the good thing for these counties that rank at the bottom of this data is that they now have some leverage to say, we want some of our tax dollars back in our communities so that we can work on these things—because we need them.

CUDA: And according to Lisa Frazier those data show that even when those dollars are applied to things communities need other than health care, they can make a big difference.

FRAZIER: all policy ends up being health policy.  Policies about education and employment and even land use --those factors impact health outcomes and health policy as well.

CUDA:  The next step says Frazier, is helping communities develop strategies to tackle a specific issue - but for now - it’s enough to get people to start to change the way their leaders think about health.  Gretchen Cuda, 90.3

Behm:  “This is the first, I would say, denovo spinout that we’ve supported from scratch.  We’ve certainly supported other spinouts as they’ve matured, and certainly case W4estern reserve University spinouts we’ve supported, but as far as taking something from scratch and building a company around it, this is the first time that the hospital’s taken the lead in this activity.”

Behm says there’s still a lot of development work to do before the treatment can be taken to market, and a commercial entity is in the best position to do it. 

FTI is located within Akron’s Biomedical Corridor District, and is part of the Akron Global Business Accelerator’s growing cluster of domestic and international life sciences companies. 

GINGRICH: Neither side should be afraid. Obama should have the courage to give up the 4500 pages of legislation. Say, I got it, the country doesn’t want it, what can we do together? And, the Republicans should go in the room with the Reagan model of trust but verify. And, they should say, look, here are the 9 or 12 positive things we believe in and we will help pass any of these that you’re willing to do.

Gingrich said he’d prefer to reform health care through a number of smaller, incremental bills, instead of doing it all at once in congress. The former speaker was invited to Akron by the Northeast Ohio Health Underwriters Association, a health insurance lobbying group.

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CLARIFICATION: After this story aired, the Northeast Ohio Health Underwriters Association took issue with our characterization of the group as a “lobbying” organization. NEOHUA Trustee Joe Blasko Jr. says the Northeast Ohio Health Underwriters Association is an education and advocacy group made up of insurance professionals working to support its members and their clients. They are not paid lobbyists, but do occasionally engage in lobbying activities.

DR. DOUG LEFTON:
“When the doctor tells you you need a blood test, you’re in a very difficult situation if you don’t have insurance.”

And it’s a growing problem as unemployment continues to push people out of insurance. 

Dr. Lefton says he saw patients being charged prices at hospitals and commercial labs 10 to 15 times higher than what medicare was paying those same labs, for the same analysis.

Working with the Summit County Medical Society, Lefton helped form an arrangement with the private, Avon Lake-based internet marketer “Prepaid” to provide blood tests at lower cost through Lab Corp, which operates 16-hundred participating private labs, in 47 states.  The low cost tests are available not just to Summit County residents, but anybody with a way to get to one of the labs. 

DR. DOUG LEFTON:
“It’s like buying anything over amazon-dot-com. You go on to this web site, choose the blood test that you want, get a cart, click on the cart and proceed to checkout.”

You access the discounts by going through the Summit County Medical Society’s site.

The result is a huge cost-savings to non-insured patients, and sometimes even lower prices than many insurance companies have negotiated for `their’ clients.  The labs profit through the volume of new work.

Making preventative care more affordable could mean more people having their illnesses treated BEFORE they become too serious.  Dr. Lefton says he hopes this kind of program catches on around the country. 

Rick Jackson, 90.3

Without the 90 million dollar levy, leaders say the county would likely eliminate or reduce some services, small - like staffing neighborhood centers, to large, such as changes in the county hospital’s budget.

Commissioner Tim Hagan was himself a patient at Metro just last week.

TIM HAGAN:
“This collective sense of voting for this levy is the conscience of this community. It expresses, in so many ways, what we think about one another.”

Hagan has said the levy also secures an additional $200 million from state and federal sources.

Other presenters ranged from the mother of shooting victim Jory Aebly, who was also treated at Metrohealth, to a young man who went through five county-supported foster homes; but is about to graduate college.

The fear is that voters might balk after a year in which county corruption cases dominated the headlines, jobs were lost, homes foreclosed, and salaries reduced.

MetroHealth CEO Mark Moran says he wants people to understand why nearly half the 90-million goes to his hospital.

MARK MORAN:
“The important thing to remember is the services that are being delivered. Those services are worth, at cost, about $114 million. The $40 million provides the support that allows us to get started.”

The Human Services levy will be on the ballot, in the May election.