Health Care

3 Burning Health Care Questions

by Tim Foley

categories: Enemies Of Reform, Obama And Congress

Published May 12, 2009 @ 08:22PM PT

There's almost too much going on in health care this week.  In an endeavor to keep you up to speed (and balance out yesterday's policy-heavy posts), I bring you three burning questions on where we are in the process?

1.)  Is anyone more spot-on than Rachel Maddow?

Maddow's surprise that the heavy hitter on the anti-reform front is Richard "Biggest Health Care Fraud Penalty of All Time" Scott and his madcap Conservatives for Patients Rights incredulously asks the questions that many of us are asking - when's the other shoe going to drop and some champion of the status quo with some, you know, credibility appear?  Sure, we all saw the Luntz Memo, but even Luntz advises his compatriots to support health care reform (at least outwardly) while targeting Obama's specific approach.  And, of course, yesterday AHIP, PhaRMA, the AMA and others just showed up for a big photo-op at the White House as allies, not adversaries.  Businesses, so potent against reform in 1993, are at the White House today.  These good times can't last - can they?

Anyway, Maddow's epic takedown of Richard Scott is required viewing.  (As an added bonus, Howard Dean everybody!)

2.)  How long before Congress ignores Robert Greenstein?

At today's Senate Finance Committee roundtable on financing, Greenstein was representing the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  His opening statement has been praised by Ezra Klein and Jon Cohn, and it's easy to see why.  If I had the ill-gotten money of Richard Scott, I'd make an ad of Greenstein making this statement, and air it in every state where there's a so-called "moderate" in the Senate:

To finance badly needed health care reform, all sides will need to make sacrifices. Tough measures will be needed - on both the spending and the revenue sides of the budget.  Moreover, the number of spending and revenue offsets that will be needed is likely to be substantial. There appears to be no single option that is politically viable and that can, by itself, produce most or all of the savings needed.

This leads to my first recommendation, in the form of a plea to the Committee. Please do not take any offset options off the table at this time. I believe you ultimately will need to put together a package that contains an array of spending and revenue offsets. The more that options are taken off the table now, the harder this will be to do.

It's easy now to make political points saying you object to this or that - and Democrats have been far more guilty of taking financing options off the table than Republicans thus far - but it just makes everything that much harder.  I totally understand the notion that talk of financing may be premature until we've determined the package of reforms - but suffice to say, taking options of the table is far more premature.

3.)  Who lit a fire under the president this week?

Yesterday, it was the unprecedented joint appearance with shareholders at the White House on reducing costs.  Today, it's a meeting with businesses like Microsoft, Safeway, and Johnson & Johnson on wellness programs and the correlation between commitment by business owners and decreased cost for chronic disease.  Tomorrow, we hear, it's a sit-down in the Oval Office to talk with Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer (Dem leadership) and Rep. Rangel, Waxman and Miller - the three committee chairs with jurisdiction on health care.  Is it safe to presume a meeting with Sens. Baucus and Kennedy will be announced at some point, too?

The last time we saw the president this deeply embroiled in health care every day of the week was around the time of his summits, his address to Congress and the release of his budget in February-March.  Suffice to say, we were building to something then - the address to Congress and the budget not only escalated the urgency on getting health care done this year, it laid down a marker in the budget for how to get it done.  But this week... well, I don't know what's out there that we'd be building to.

Is this just vitamins or does Obama have something up his sleeve?

(Photo credit:  Leo Reynolds on Flickr.)