September 15, 2008

It is with great sadness that I must announce the passing early this morning of a true American patriot and friend of SIMPD, Pat Rooney at the age of eighty. As some you know, he recently became a SIMPD sponsor, having offered to do so without being asked. He collapsed and died suddenly and unexpectedly this morning at home with his wife Karen beside him. 

Pat Rooney was my friend.  I made it a point to meet him in the 1990s when he was running for governor of Indiana. I had read for several years about his vision of a health care financing system based on Health Savings Accounts and high deductible insurance and his personal efforts to advance that cause. He was then marketing Medical Savings Account programs through his company Golden Rule Insurance in 46 states, but not in California, a market of which he was quite suspicious and had avoided. This was before any tax deductibility for such accounts existed and Pat was intensely lobbying Congress to create tax deductible MSAs and HSAs. He visited California drumming up support for his gubernatorial run and we got together a group of doctors to meet with and encourage him to find a way to market MSA programs in California. Though suspicious of the California insurance market, for good reason, he listened, said he was impressed with our enthusiasm, and soon after acted decisively.

A few months later, having dropped out of the Governor's race, he launched a brand new independent insurance company in California and moved to Long Beach determined to make his new California company revolutionize the health insurance market here. He lived and worked here in California for a full year having handed over the operation of Golden Rule to his daughters. I had the pleasure of working with him and making appearances with him during this successful effort. He did hundreds of personal appearances and media interviews during that year and took on the chairmanship of a controversial project for then Governor Wilson which caused him some grief and even resulted in a few death threats from opponents. 

I was customer number 63 buying a Medical Savings Insurance Company product for my family, which I still hold and use today. While here in California I had the honor of being his physician. He, like me, was a pilot and we flew together here in California. The difference was that I had a single engine Piper and he a Golden Rule Insurance Company corporate Beach King Air twin turboprop with a full time corporate pilot on call, so we were not in the same class there at all. Once, when I was in Chicago for a meeting, he flew the King Air from Indianapolis to Chicago and back in a horrible storm, just to have dinner with me. That was the kind of friend he was. We celebrated the passage of "his law", that night, the new HSA law over an Italian dinner at his favorite Chicago restaurant. He was a very happy man that night.

In his sixties when I met him and into his seventies, he was endlessly energetic and enthusiastic about everything he did. Since his year here in California we have been in constant communication and I do and did consider him one of my best friends. When my father died he commissioned a daily mass for a year in my father's name at his Indianapolis Church, a touching gesture and completely unexpected. When in Indianapolis I stayed at his home where important political guest constantly came and went, and dined on poached eggs and toast every morning he personally prepared. When here in California he dined at my home and we sat for hours over the dinner table discussing plans to advance the cause of consumer directed and controlled health care financing and limit the power of third parties, even though he himself was an insurance company owner. Wealthy and influential he was, but humble also. I have never met a man quite like Pat. 

Pat Rooney was unique. He is the true father of Medical Savings Accounts and Health Savings Accounts without doubt and therefore launched the consumer directed heath care movement. He was a champion of freedom in education and ran a charitable foundation to support it. He belonged to and was a major financial supporter of a primarily black inner city Catholic parish church and in his early years studied to become a Jesuit priest, but ended that plan upon the death of his father when it fell upon Pat to support the family. Though a dedicated Catholic he was profoundly critical of his church's behavior toward the poor who were abused by Catholic hospital systems overcharging them for care. Ending that abuse became one of his primary missions in life. I hope and trust that someone at Medical Savings Insurance has the will and foresight to continue that mission. His business skills were legendary as were his political skills. He is a great and premature loss to the nation.

A wake and funeral is planned this Wednesday and Thursday September 17 and 18. Were I not committed to be in San Diego in the service of SIMPD on Wednesday and Thursday I assure you I would be in Indianapolis to pay my respects and say my goodbyes to this great American and my friend, J. Patrick Rooney.

Tom LaGrelius, MD, FAAFP 
President, SIMPD