8:30 - 9:00 AM
Welcoming Remarks
Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr, Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center Board of Directors
Dr. Sheila Schuster, Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky

9:00 - 9:20 AM
The Fletcher Administration’s Vision for Covering Kentucky's Uninsured
How Kentucky’s first-ever physician governor hopes to leverage more coverage options for Kentucky’s uninsured.
Governor Ernie Fletcher

9:30 - 10:20 AM
A Profile of Kentucky's Uninsured
Principal Investigator and an Endowed Chair and Distinguished Scholar in Rural Health Policy at the University of Kentucky, Professor Michael E. Samuels, and Project Director and Senior Policy Analyst with the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, Michal Smith-Mello, present findings from the surveys of Kentucky households and small businesses about health insurance. These findings will be complemented by the real-world stories of Kentuckians who attended a series of 17 public forums in Kentucky’s area development districts. The findings shed light on who Kentucky’s uninsured are, why they are uninsured, what uninsurance costs them, how they get health care, and much more. The findings provide the critical underpinning for solutions to the seemingly intractable problem of uninsurance.

10:25 - 10:55 AM
How Society Pays and How Much
Dr. John Holahan of the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute and Dr. Amy L. Watts of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center explain and estimate the significant cost that accrues to society when a sizeable portion of its population does not have access to needed health care. Research shows that the uninsured receive fewer preventive and diagnostic services, tend to be more severely ill when they are diagnosed, and receive less therapeutic care. The consequences are virtually incalculable losses that extend well beyond the uninsured person’s loss of health and longevity. They include lost income, quality of life, security, and emotional stability for the uninsured and their families; lost productivity and competitiveness for employers; lost contributions to communities; lost revenue for governments at every level and public services for the good of all; and higher health care, health insurance, and public costs for all.

11:00 - 11:55 AM
Alternative State Strategies for Covering the Uninsured
Many states are serving as true laboratories of democracy, taking bold steps forward in the effort to close widening gaps in health insurance coverage. The strategies and early outcomes of experiments underway in four states and in Kentucky will be the focus of this session. They include DirigoChoice, the early phase of a multiyear strategy that aims to extend full coverage to all citizens of similarly rural Maine by the year 2009, presented by Adam Thompson of the Governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance in Maine; Utah’s Primary Care Network, which provides publicly funded, “front-end” health care to low-income citizens who do not qualify for other types of coverage, presented by the state’s Medicaid Deputy Director, Michael Hales; Healthy New York, which helps fund reinsurance, the financial backstop for insurers, to enable the introduction of lower-costs policies that are more affordable to employees of small firms, presented by Mary Frances Sabo of New York’s State Insurance Department; and West Virginia’s multifaceted efforts to contain costs and uninsurance by, among other things, enabling the introduction of lower-cost insurance products and joining a multistate pharmaceutical purchasing pool, presented by Sally Richardson of West Virginia’s Institute for Health Policy Research. Finally, participants will hear from Shawn Crouch of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services about the levers this administration hopes to use to contain insurance costs. Dr. Susan Zepeda, Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, will moderate.

1:30 - 3:00 PM
The Annual KET Panel Discussion
Timely and provocative from year to year, a taped and later televised KET panel discussion led by Bill Goodman, host of KET’s award-winning “Kentucky Tonight,” has become a staple of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center’s annual conference. This year’s panel will discuss one of the most enduring and seemingly intractable state and national problems: how best to cover the uninsured in an increasingly costly and complex health care system. Panelists will include representatives from states that have led the way in innovative responses to the problem of uninsurance, and Kentucky policymakers, business leaders, insurance executives, and advocates for the uninsured:
David Adkisson, Kentucky Chamber of Commerce
Matt Bassett, Chief of Staff, Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services
Michael Hales, Medicaid Deputy Director, Utah
Dr. John Holahan, Urban Institute
Representative Steve Nunn, Kentucky General Assembly
Speaker Jody Richards, Kentucky General Assembly
Sally Richardson, Institute for Health Policy Research, West Virginia
Mary Frances Sabo, State Insurance Department, New York
Dr. Sheila A. Schuster, Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky
Adam Thompson, Governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance, Maine
Jude Thompson, President, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kentucky

3:15 - 4:30 PM
Weighing Our Options for Covering the Uninsured
Professor Larry I. Palmer, Endowed Chair in Urban Health Policy at the University of Louisville, and Professor Julia Costich, Chair of the Department of Health Services Management in the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky, will brief attendees on selected policy options for extending health insurance coverage to more Kentucky citizens. Professors Palmer and Costich will assess the legal, ethical, and practical implications of these policies, which are based on extensive research and review of state-level experiments and strategies for covering the uninsured and findings from the household and small business survey. A number of potential strategies are products of state planning grants from the Health Resources and Services Administration, which funded the Kentucky Health Insurance Research Project.

Using state-of-the-art technology from GTCO CalComp Peripherals, conference attendees will be empowered to vote for their preferred strategy for covering Kentucky’s uninsured. Results of this and other policy questions will be registered and shown in real time on large screens in the main meeting room. The process represents an unprecedented opportunity to voice your opinion and your support for specific policies aimed at providing health insurance for Kentucky’s growing population of uninsured, whose numbers exceed half a million people, about 64,000 of whom are children.