Alaska faces many severe health care challenges, and not a Governor in sight.

(Image to the left borrowed from my good friend AK Muckraker.)


High costs of care and insurance are just two of the problems for Alaskans with health problems.

For the elderly, private doctors routinely reject Medicare patients because federal reimbursement does not cover their expenses.

There's a chronic problem recruiting doctors and nurses to many parts of the isolated state, and it's a challenge persuading residents to lay off tobacco and junk food, which contribute to serious rates of cancer, diabetes and heart disease. (Language barriers, isolation, challenging weather conditions, and uncooperative patients are just some of the complaints that have been expressed by health care professionals s who have worked in Alaska villages.)

Health care has been marginally addressed by Gov. Sarah Palin during her two years in office. A spokesman says she will unveil health care proposals Thursday.

"It wasn't something she put a great deal of effort in, from what I could tell," said Rep. Sharon Cissna, an Anchorage Democrat who champions health care in the Alaska Legislature. (Anybody surprised? If it does not get her into the national spotlight Palin simply cannot be bothered.)

Palin in 2007 created a health care strategies council that set lofty goals -- health care costs below the national average, quality health care accessible to all Alaskans, increasing the number who are insured. The goals have been minimally addressed and none have been realized.

Palin in 2008 used the state budget, flush with surplus cash tied to an oil tax change and crude oil prices over $100 per barrel, to address the shortage of health care workers. She supported money for recruiting and training doctors, nurses, dental hygienists and EMTs at the University of Alaska.

Palin approved $3.85 million for 26 federal community health centers so they could expand services to medically underserved areas.

Outside the budget, Palin's main health care effort in the 2008 legislative session was a three-prong bill.

It would have set up a medical information clearinghouse, allowing patients to comparison shop for doctors and prescription drugs.

The measure would have set up a health care commission, a measure Cissna said was crucial for planning and setting up a comprehensive approach to health care problems.

(Sound too good to be true? Well then you know the down side is only moments away.)

Both measures were well-received, but Palin insisted they be tied to a measure that fit in with her "less government is better" philosophy: elimination of Alaska's Certificate of Need requirement, a regulatory tool that prohibits duplicate medical services in communities.

"Eliminating the CON program, with certain exceptions, will allow free-market competition and reduce onerous government regulation," Palin said in a newspaper opinion piece.

"She thought it was a no-brainer, that people needed increased access, provided by competition," said Anna Kim, a health issues aide in the governor's office.

The measure was strongly opposed by Alaska hospitals, especially outside Anchorage. They said it would jeopardize their few profitable services, such as surgery and imaging, which help pay for emergency rooms and other money losers.

So the result of this poorly thought out, purely ideological decision, is that Alaskans in the bush simply do not receive access to the medical care that they so drastically need. And even in Anchorage, Alaska's biggest city, there is a chronic lack of new physicians and nurses.

And while this and numerous other problems plague our state, our Governor is so busy getting her hair done and picking an outfit from the pile of clothes stolen from the GOP for her next photo op, that she seems not to have any time left to help Alaskans and their children who are facing a very frightening future indeed.

We desperately need a governor, and instead we have a spokes model for the GOP.

It is time for Alaskans to say "enough is enough"!