‘Critical Care’ on the tables at Speakers Forum

Published 10:18 am Friday, September 18, 2009

The 2009-2010 Library Speakers Forum will begin with a topic that touches a nerve these days: the U.S. health care debate.

“Sunday is going to be interesting,” moderator Bob Fortner said.

Fortner, a retired physician, will shepherd the afternoon panel discussion titled, “The U.S. Health Care System – Is There a Cure?” The event is one of three fall Speakers Forum discussions concerning of-the-moment medical issues, all grouped into the series “Critical Care.”

Forum organizer Kathleen Thorne selected an appropriately diverse group of speakers for this weekend, Fortner said, including island residents Scott Lindquist, director of Kitsap County Health District, and Michael Soman, executive medical director in the Group Practice Division of Group Health Cooperative.

Also participating are Aaron Katz, health policy lecturer at the University of Washington School of Public Health, and Ross Baker, manager of government affairs for Regence BlueShield.

In the face of the contentiousness of recent health care debate, Fortner is firm about not letting Sunday’s discussion drift into the politics of health care reform. Instead, he has an eye toward conveying fact by asking each panelist to outline the reforms he’d deem necessary to achieve both universal coverage and cost containment.

“What I want for the audience to take a way from this is a non-political understanding about the structural changes and the tradeoffs that, from each speaker’s view, would be part of a reform plan that achieves the twin goals,” Fortner said.

No matter where a member of the public lands on the continuum, many of the proposals outlined in the latest health care plan get at core beliefs about, and in many cases, fear for, individual, family or public welfare. And while Fortner doesn’t expect bad behavior at the discussion, he’s keenly aware of just how hot the topic is.

So he’s going to set ground rules: no signs, and no outbursts. If we can’t have civil discourse on Bainbridge Island, he said, then where can we have it?

Still, he said the two hours allotted will likely be too short.

“I think it will be vigorous,” he said.