Whether Congress will pass comprehensive health care reform is, shall we say, an “iffy” proposition at this stage. Members of Congress continue to meet, seeking to find a way to pass meaningful reforms through a House increasingly reluctant to support anything expensive and a Senate incapable of shutting off a filibuster. Not surprisingly, observers are looking for clues as to what Plan B … or C, D, E and F … might look like.
According to the Associated Press “President Barack Obama’s modest health care budget may be harbinger of what’s ahead if his overhaul plan dies in Congress.” “Modest” is the correct word. Among the items:
- Emergency funds for state Medicaid programs ($25.5 billion) to help handle the influx of program participants as a result of the recession.
- $290 million to community health centers, providers to much of the uninsured.
- Funds for Medicare to experiment with ways of treating chronic health problems.
- Increased funding for comparative effectiveness research to help identify the treatments most effective at addressing costly conditions
- A boost to existing efforts to speed adoption of computerized medical records.
- increasing anti-fraud personnel and programs within Medicare and Medicaid.
Any and all of these may be useful and necessary. None individually or all of them collectively can be called “comprehensive.” As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius describes them, the budget is “a platform.” And that is how it should be looked at. If comprehensive health care reform legislation dies in Congress, the game will shift to “small ball” in Washington, D.C. The goal will be to accumulate minor gains through the budget, to advance health care reform through executive orders, and to use existing programs to experiment with ways of improving medical care and reducing health care costs.
Comprehensive health care reform coming out of Washington is still possible, albeit far more unlikely now than just two weeks ago. As a result states are far more likely to move forward with more robust reform legislation than were considered in the past year or so. And Washington will continue to try to improve on the status quo through small efforts aimed at having a substantial cumulative effect. Significantly, because these more restrained proposals are less controversial, there’s a high likelihood at least some of these ideas will become law.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Health Care Reform, Healthcare Reform, Politics Tagged: Kathleen Sebelius, Medicaid, medical cost containment, Medicare 
