November 2008 Archives

In his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis, former Sen. Tom Daschle, who is expected to become secretary of Health and Human Services, proposed creation of a Federal Health Board. The Federal Reserve-style institution would make many decisions about public health care programs that now must be legislated.

What do you see as the pluses and minuses of a Federal Health Board? How would it affect the private health care system? Would it mesh with leading Democratic proposals? And, instead of creating such a board, would it be better to give HHS more power over health care?

Here [PDF] is how Daschle described his proposal in a March interview with the Kaiser Family Foundation:

"They would start by creating a framework within which decisions involving best practices could be decided. Decisions involving greater emphasis on prevention could be considered. Decisions involving whether or not we could set up a -- say a federal health court to deal with malpractice issues in the future -- that kind of decision making, putting greater emphasis on management of the chronic care problems that we have in this country today but all of those decisions today are largely relegated to Congress. Congress sets some decision making with regard to many of these things at least on the public side and the bottom line is most of them never get made or get made well after the fact. Congress is just not capable of being the manager of a health care system and yet it's largely Congress today that has that responsibility. It hasn't worked for the last 50 years. It'll work even less in the next 50."

-- Marilyn Werber Serafini, NationalJournal.com

7 responses: Marilyn Werber Serafini, James P. Gelfand, Glenn Hackbarth, Stuart Butler, John C. Goodman, Marilyn Werber Serafini, Karen Davis

How should policy makers fix the current insurance market for individuals? What is the best policy approach, and what has to happen to avoid a Republican or industry attack that could kill health care reform efforts?

While there is agreement that the market for buying health insurance as an individual doesn't work well, and that the system needs serious improvement before more people can be added, proposals for how to do it vary significantly.

Republicans generally want to give insurers new freedoms to offer a variety of health plans, even plans with catastrophic benefits, and to allow people to buy insurance in any state they wish. The idea is to create competition among health insurers to lower costs.

Democrats, however, want to crack down on insurers. President-elect Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., have both proposed prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people because of pre-existing conditions and poor health status. Insurers have indicated that they could live with this only if every person has insurance.

-- Marilyn Werber Serafini, NationalJournal.com

13 responses: Marilyn Werber Serafini, Raymond C. Scheppach, Rich Umbdenstock, Karen Ignagni, Len Nichols, James P. Gelfand, Nancy H. Nielsen, Marilyn Werber Serafini, Karen Davis, John C. Goodman, Grace-Marie Turner, Paul B. Ginsburg, Jonathan Gruber

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus will announce his blueprint for health reform at noon today. Below is the executive summary. Can this plan work, and is he close enough to President-elect Obama's proposal that they can work together? Are there hot spots for stakeholders and Republicans?

-- Marilyn Werber Serafini, NationalJournal.com

From Sen. Baucus:

Like a sturdy stool, the Call to Action has three equally important legs: (1) a policy that ensures meaningful coverage and care to all Americans; (2) an insistence that any such expansion be coupled with an emphasis on higher quality, greater value, and -- over time -- less costly care; and (3) an absolute commitment to weed out waste, eliminate overpayments, and design a sustainable financing system that works for taxpayers as well as for the nation's recipients and providers of health care.

Continue reading Will The Baucus Blueprint Work?

11 responses: Marilyn Werber Serafini, David B. Kendall, John C. Goodman, Len Nichols, Nancy H. Nielsen, Karen Davis, Ed Howard, Rich Umbdenstock, Jeffrey Levi, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Henry J. Aaron

With President-elect Obama already beginning to focus on staffing his administration, he will need everything from a secretary of Health and Human Services to a White House domestic policy adviser to the heads of HHS agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.

Already, the name of Obama adviser and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is floating around Washington as a possibility for HHS secretary. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, a physician and former governor of Vermont, also is being mentioned.

How should the job descriptions for these key health care positions read? Should Obama be looking for Washington insiders or outsiders? Policy wonks or governor/management types? Clintonites or new blood?

-- Marilyn Werber Serafini, NationalJournal.com

4 responses: Rich Umbdenstock, Jeffrey Levi, John C. Goodman, Len Nichols

How do you see the outcome of the presidential election changing the health care reform debate? Or, how will the congressional elections' outcome affect it?

-- Marilyn Werber Serafini, NationalJournal.com

13 responses: Andy Stern, Drew Altman, John C. Goodman, Donna Shalala, Rich Umbdenstock, Len Nichols, Marilyn Werber Serafini, Karen Davis, Marilyn Werber Serafini, Stuart Butler, John C. Goodman, Donna Shalala, Newt Gingrich