President Scott Rethke called the February 20, 2014 Kirkland Rotary Club meeting to order at 6:30PM.  Rick Ostrander was our greeter & John Pruitt led us all in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Introductions:
Guests:Former Rotarian Angela Petke; Becca and Jillian Honcoop; Student of the Month Oscar Johansson from Lake Washington High School; Teddy Overleese; Kay Petersen; Bob Malte, our speaker and CEO of Evergreen Hospital & Merilee Dicks
Announcements:
We will have a Rotary team building event at Hectors 5:30PM, February 20.  Bring a potential new member, and enjoy chatting with your fellow Rotarians.
Jerry Campo reminded us of the Club Hockey Night with the Everett Silvertips, March 15.  He will send an email reminding us.
Barb Seaton announced the Kirkland Rotary Foundation Auction.  Sign up to come, to donate items for the Auction, donate a home-made dessert for the dessert auction.
There is a picture montage on display here tonight featuring Chuck Brockway and past Miracle League seasons.
Scott Becker announced we are still making progress on Duck Dash sponsorships, including our newest member Harry Wagner!  We currently are at $14,500, heading towards our goal of $25,000
 
Jason Overleese introduced our speaker Bob Malte, CEO of Evergreen Healthcare.  He is a member of Redmond Rotary.
Mr. Malte spoke about the system’s beginning experiences with Affordable Healthcare Act.
The hospital and clinic receives 2000 patients per day.  The 3000 employees and doctors and volunteers are a great team.  Evergreen is recognized as being among the top 5% of hospitals in the US.  The hospital is financially solid.
The problem that ‘Obamacare’ is designed to solve:
16% [50 million] are under- or uninsured
Access to healthcare
17.6% of GDP spent on healthcare.
$15K per employee per year is a typical cost for a company.
$6782 per person out-of-pocket costs per person.
Medicare solvency.
More than 345,000 Washingtonians have signed up, out of the one million uninsured in the state.  Some of these may be people dumped out of other plans.  ¾ are enrolled in Apple Health (Medicaid).  Evergreen is helping people to sign-up, 600 so far.
The system is beginning to move towards ‘payment reform’, with a closer connection between the customer and the payer.  As part of this, we are moving also towards more transparency in pricing for specific services.  We will soon be able, with many providers, to go to a web site and find out satisfaction rates, infection rates, and costs per procedure.
Evergreen is also moving towards an ‘integrated model’ with many types of care and procedures being provided under the same umbrella.
This was an extremely informative talk as to the Affordable Health Care Act and the operations of Evergreen.
 
Jerry Campo AGAIN had the correct ticket, but again failed to draw the Joker.
 
Reminder – March 8, work party at Northwest Harvest.
 
No Meeting next week, February 17, Presidents’ Day.  Meeting Adjourned at 7:37 PM.