With the continuing push to get health care reform legislation drafted and marked up before the summer recess, Congress and the Obama Administration continued forward by hosting a gathering to address how America can reduce the growth rate of health care costs. Participants at this “forum” included insurers, hospitals, physicians, medical device manufacturers companies, pharmaceutical companies, labor officials, as well as a few of the President’s highest ranking advisors. A full list of the participants can be found here. The focus of this meeting was outlined on a three page fact sheet that focused on the following topics:
· Rising health care costs that are burdening families, business, governments and the economy, and the need to take action now
· Acknowledgement of health care industry leaders now pledging to make a major reduction in cost growth as part of comprehensive health reform.
· Health care industry leaders who are now joining with the administration to improve efficiency and quality.
While the Obama administration used this boney skeleton of a ‘fact sheet,’ they offered no concrete strategy on how to specifically address rising costs. Although officials noted that since 2000 health insurance premiums have almost doubled and health care premiums have grown three times faster than wages since, they did not assign blame or specify any causes for this discrepancy. Instead, they euphemistically used this “statistic” to assert that “ the American people are eager to put the old Washington ways behind them and put us on a steady path toward a patient-centered health care system that reduces costs, preserves an individual’s choice of doctor and plan and assures quality, affordable health care for every American.”
Next, the fact sheet assumingly spoke for all of the health care industry leaders and stakeholders regarding comprehensive health reform by suggesting that current proposals from these groups could save $2 trillion over the next 10 years.
Yet none of these proposals were explicitly mentioned. Instead, the Obama administration again played the numbers game with this health care reform issue by stating that these ‘proposals’ would “reduce the annual health care spending growth rate by 1.5 percentage points for the next 10 years.” But that’s easy to say when health care spending annually will grow exponentially over the next ten years with universal coverage, continued abuse and fraud in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and workforce shortages in the health care industry.
There was however a letter from AHIP, AMA, AHA, PhRMA, SEIU, and AdvaMed that advocated for similar issues the President outlined in his fact sheet.
Accordingly, the focus then centered on reform of the payment system to eliminate waste and cost shifting; align incentives toward quality care and healthy outcomes, and other typically echoed concerns regarding payments. While these ideas have been floating around for most of the 111th Congress through various pieces of legislation and hearings, many questions and solutions to these problems have still gone unanswered, which worries many opponents of public health care options as well as industry, insurers, and physicians.
Consequently, the discussion then surrounded perhaps the most important issue facing the Obama administration, which is to keep its promise by building upon budget proposals to achieve savings in Medicare and Medicaid. As a result, the fact sheet outlined the following ideas:
· Improve Care after Hospitalizations and Reduce Hospital Readmission Rates
· Reducing Medicare Overpayments to Private Insurers through Competitive Payments
· Reducing Drug Prices
· Improving Medicare and Medicaid Payment Accuracy
· Expanding the Hospital Quality Improvement Program
Ultimately, with the final hearings and roundtable discussions within the Senate Finance and HELP Committees, along with House hearings, this recent development regarding health care reform should mean one thing to the American public: If health care reform is on its way, not only will there be little if no bipartisan support, but it will almost certainly be “shoved down the throats” of many legislators as one Senator suggested.
That means that there will not be enough time to work out potential problems and predict future impediments. It also means that the time for public input and comment will be severely limited because much of the “legislating” is done behind scenes and because the public’s input to the minority (Republicans) will fall on deaf ears.
With the media always comparing America’s present economic crisis to the Great Depression, Americans should also remember one thing: today, over sixty years after FDR’s expansion of alphabet agencies, our national government has never controlled such bureaucratic growth and spending.