Governors took on energy and health issues Sunday morning at the second full day of policy discussions at the National Governors Association summer meetings.
Cindy Mann, director of the Center of Medicaid and State Operations, recently took over that office. She said CMSO will focus on improving relations between the federal government and states, which she said have been rocky at times. Mann said her office was also going to work to improve states' ability to administer their Medicaid dollars and there would be "consistent, transparent" federal rules.
"The focus has been very much over the last period of time your state's matching dollars rather than helping beneficiaries get access to health care in cost-effective manners," Mann said. "I am here to say it is a new day."
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said a lot of Medicaid costs have been shifted from the federal government to the states. He also said he didn't believe a uniform set of federal rules would be good for all states, many of which have unique challenges.
"There is a wide diversity and demographic challenge among our states," Perdue said. "That's why Medicaid earlier gave us flexibility for state programs."
A health-care reform bill that is being talked about in Congress could spend up to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, which organizers said made the panel discussion timely. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said many Americans have probably tuned out congressional discussions on healt care because most of it is in bureaucratic, procedural terms they don't relate to. Often the focus has been on costs rather than care, she said.
"As long a Congress continues to talk only about (Congressional Budget Office's) scores and how much it is going to cost, we've lost America," she said. "When we start talking like you all are talking, which is how do we get better quality care to the patient, which we know will drive down the cost, I think people then will say, 'It's time. That is what we want to have happen."
Another governor-led panel tackled energy. Jon Sakoda, a partner in New Enterprise Associates, a global venture capital firm that invests in energy, said investors are bullish on renewable energy technology and costs of those technologies has dropped substantially over the years. He said in 1979 it took $32 a watt to build a solar panel, but now it costs $2 a watt and could drop to $1.
The federal stimulus bill gave 30 percent tax credits for companies that build renewable energyaEUR"related products, such as solar panels, but Sakoda said those credits should be made permanent and also increased so the United States can compete with foreign plans. To see more of The Sun Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sunherald.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, The Sun Herald, Biloxi, Miss.