Anchorage Daily News

Two leaders in Alaska's nonprofit sector are pioneering a plan that should help reduce the ranks of the uninsured.

The Foraker Group, an organization that supports nonprofit organizations, is making it possible for many nonprofits to band together and get health insurance. The Rasmuson Foundation is putting $2 million into the plan to help get it started.

This pool will make it more affordable for organizations on slim budgets to provide health insurance.

If it's a success, small businesses and other groups could form associations based on the same ideas.

Dennis McMillian, president of Foraker, says Foraker and the Rasmuson Foundation are taking a bit of gamble. Will the plan be attractive enough to enroll the 1,500 people they need to make it work? And will they be able to hold down costs?

McMillian says Foraker and the foundation are trying to create a health plan that will result in stable rates over the long run. Risks, such as one person having a devastating and expensive medical emergency, will be spread over a big pool of people instead of one small arts or youth group.

McMillian figures there are about 6,000 employees of Alaska nonprofits that lack insurance.

The plan is intended to hold down costs through a high deductible, coaching those with expensive health problems such as diabetes or high blood pressure, and consumer attention to the cost of the medical services they're getting.

Foraker will hold meetings all around the state to explain the plan and emphasize such things as encouraging employees to ask their doctors for lower-cost alternatives to medicine or tests, for example.

The plan calls for employees to put money in pre-tax savings accounts to spend on any uncovered health expenses. Employers will contribute $750 to each employee's savings account. That will help offset the $1,500 deductible. Employers also must pay 75 percent of the monthly premiums.

The Foraker-Rasmuson proposal is one of three good alternatives being explored in Alaska to provide health insurance for more people.

It's the only one that doesn't involve government.

Another idea is to cover more children through a state insurance program targeted at the working poor, Denali KidCare. A proposal to do that failed to win approval in the 2008 Legislature.

A third proposal, advanced by Sen. Hollis French of Anchorage, would be to set up a system in which uninsured people would be given vouchers good for acquiring health insurance.

Employers who don't offer insurance would contribute funds to help pay for the vouchers. Sen. French's bill got some hearings in the last legislative session, but no vote.

All of these proposals have merit. And doing one of them does not preclude trying the others.

While the nonprofit one is off the ground, the Denali KidCare and French proposals need to be re-introduced in the next Legislature.

BOTTOM LINE: Foraker and the Rasmuson Foundation are proposing a bold health care plan that could improve life for many Alaskans.

In good time

Ken Jones made an impression on me long before I met him. In 1985 he published a Compass piece in the Daily News about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall -- the Moving Wall replica of the D.C. memorial. He wrote about keeping a late watch in the rain at the memorial's stop on the Anchorage Park Strip and those he spoke with there -- a war protester making peace with the dead, a woman who learned she'd lost her husband while still in the hospital after losing her baby.

I'd read his piece on the copy desk then. Almost 20 years later I was doing editorial pages and looking for something more than platitudes to mark Memorial Day. I remembered the Compass piece, called Ken Jones and invited him to write another if the spirit moved. About 675 words.

The spirit had been moving for a long time. He gave me a manuscript entitled "Black Granite Reflections," about fighting in Vietnam and his struggle to come home after that.

In practical terms, this was an editor's bane. I asked for 675 words, I got an epic.

"Black Granite Reflections" didn't solve my Memorial Day Compass problem, but I started reading it anyway. I wouldn't have stopped, but daily deadlines wailed.

We tried to distill part of "Black Granite Reflections" into a Sunday feature, but that didn't work out. On the other hand, we did start a conversation that we've continued on and off for five years or so. So if I missed a deadline, I made a friend.

Now Jones has reworked the book and launched a Web site dedicated to those returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families and friends. It's good work. Check it out at www.whenourtroopscomehome.com.

-- Frank Gerjevic

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