Rep. Stark Sees Health Reform Votes In Late 2009/Early 2010, “Deferred Maintenance” Items Sooner
This article was originally published in The Pink Sheet Daily
Executive Summary
Drug industry, hospitals, physicians are among must-have supporters for reform to pass.
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House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark, D-Calif., is predicting that any congressional votes on comprehensive health care reform legislation will take place toward the end of 2009 or, at the latest, early the following year. The near-term focus for Congress will be "deferred maintenance" health issues, he said. With the incoming Obama administration making health care reform a high profile issue, stakeholders from many sides are eager to get to work on the issue quickly. President-elect Barack Obama recently said he hopes to convene key parties "early" in the administration, and his HHS Secretary-nominee Tom Daschle will kick off a series of forums to obtain grass-roots perspectives (1 (Also see "Obama Taps Daschle, Lambrew To Lead New White House Health Care Reform Office" - Pink Sheet, 11 Dec, 2008.)). But Stark suggested that the eagerness should be tempered by legislative realities. "I don't think you can have a complete reform plan" in the first 100 days of Congress, he said. "We have so much deferred maintenance. We have to figure out what to do about [the State Children's Health Insurance Program], what to do about [Medicare] paying the doctors, what to do about health information technology, all these things Republicans ignored for the eight years." Stark urges colleagues to wait for Obama reform guidelines The subcommittee chairman outlined his views during a Dec. 17 teleconference hosted by the Institute for America's Future. The teleconference was held to introduce an institute report on including a government-sponsored insurance plan as part of national health care reform. Stark suggested that legislators could begin drafting reform legislation in parallel with working on the deferred items. But he said it is "imperative" that Congress wait for the new administration to provide guidelines about what it wants from a health care reform package. Given the huge undertaking that is health care reform, "everybody has to have their day in court and be able to comment on a plan. You are not going to do that in a hundred days," Stark said. "We're not going to pass these plans if we don't have the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and even pharma" industry on board supporting the plan. But Stark expressed little concern about winning support from commercial insurers. "You are not going to get the insurance industry on board, I don't think, but they are the easiest to roll because nobody likes insurance companies." Public plan may be necessary element of reform package The California Democrat expects to see a variety of plans introduced. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., told reporters Dec. 11 that he expects to introduce language early in 2009 (2 (Also see "Obama Taps Daschle, Lambrew To Lead New White House Health Care Reform Office" - Pink Sheet, 11 Dec, 2008.)). Baucus outlined some basic talking points about what might be included in his version of a health care reform package in a white paper released Nov. 12 and suggested during a press conference to release that paper that smaller issues, such as comparative effectiveness, could be addressed first outside of the reform legislation to help set the tone for getting the full plan enacted (3 , p. 16). "I think there will be a couple of plans in the Senate and they will probably coalesce around one and I'd be surprised if there weren't a couple of plans in the House that we would meld together," Stark said. Regarding the topic of the call, a government-sponsored insurance alternative, Stark was asked if a health reform package without such a plan would be a non-starter. "I believe so," Stark said. "I think in the absence of a public plan that people could opt into, you would have to so strictly regulate the other plans that they in effect would all become public plans." Added Stark: "I don't see any other alternative." -Gregory Twachtman ([email protected]) |