Philadelphia Daily News

All of us can agree on a few basic tenets of health-care reform.

We want improved access to care, not just in the form of reducing the number of uninsured in the commonwealth, but also by having the medical capacity to care for everyone who needs health care services. We also want a system that can provide the highest quality of care at the lowest price.

As CEO of Greater Philadelphia Health Action, I know that community health centers are part of the health care solution.

GPHA cares for more than 72,000 patients a year. Almost one-third have no insurance, and more than half are enrolled in Medicaid. We work every day to make sure the most vulnerable among us have access to high-quality, affordable health care.

As the health-care reform debate continues in Harrisburg, we appreciate the efforts of the governor and the Legislature to increase access to care and generate more efficiency in our health-care delivery system.

However, we do have concerns with a proposal from the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare (DPW) to "carve out" pharmacy services from the private sector Managed Care Organizations and take over providing this benefit for up to 1 million Medicaid patients who are enrolled in these managed-care plans.

DPW says it can provide the same level of care while saving taxpayer dollars. But DPW has yet to say how it plans to implement the new program.

We also worry about whether DPW will have the manpower to implement such a change efficiently and effectively.

Fragmenting this delivery system by "carving out" pharmacy services will take away from this continuum of care.

Ronald Heigler, CEO
Greater Philadelphia Health Action