Managed Care - October 2008 - (Page 21) “but there are significant economic benefits associated with health care reform.” Don’t look for anyone in the group to take sides in the election. Their focus is staying “positive and productive,” says Ignagni. Even Laszewski doesn’t completely discount the chance of a significant reform leap. If it’s coming, he says, it’s going to have to be a compromise everyone can agree on. “Ron Wyden’s bill is an example of what could icy Analysis based in Dallas. “And the great danger is that we will enact a lot of reforms that will raise taxes, create new regulations, and otherwise discomfort and harass us without solving any of those three problems. I’m tempted to say that is the likely thing to happen. People are inclined to do something without asking what to do with these three problems.” What Goodman, a champion of health savings accounts and an advocate of a version of consumer- “Gridlock is better than doing the wrong thing,” says the conservative John Goodman. “Everybody’s idea of reform is getting somebody else to pay for health care.” happen if they compromise,” says Laszewski, citing a bipartisan bill that proposes to shift from an employer-based health insurance system to one in which individuals would be required to pick their plan, with subsidies for low-income consumers. “I don’t see that willingness yet. If you were going to have a compromise between conservatives and liberals, that’s a compromise that gives both sides what they want. It’s also a major, major leap, though, and I don’t see that happening.” directed health care, sees as danger looks, from the left, like opportunity. “Both candidates have plans that would significantly change the way health care works in America,” says Richard Kirsch, the national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now, an advocacy group that includes a large contingent of labor organizations as well as groups like MoveOn.org that support Obama. “They take totally divergent approaches but they both say that major change has to happen. So regardless of who is the president, it’s clear that there’s going to be an agenda for major change.” Even if McCain is the last man standing at the door to the White House, says Kirsch, he is going to have to come around more to the Obama plan than his own. Right vs. left “Capitalism is a wonderful thing, but it shouldn’t be in health care,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a longtime proponent of a single-payer system, told a luncheon crowd during the Democratic National Convention in Denver. That’s a provocative statement, and one that has little currency in the debate that’s raging now. While that argument is popular among some on the left, the Democratic side of the debate is dominated now by Obama’s message that private insurance should be preserved but controlled through new regulations governing premiums, access, and mandated coverage. But whether you look to the right or left of the political spectrum, the regulatory tool is always closest at hand. Both see it as a weapon; they just disagree about where it’s pointed. “The three primary problems we have now are cost and quality and access,” says John Goodman, who runs the conservative National Center for Pol- Hybrid model? “With all this pressure for change, McCain would have to figure out how to work with a larger Democratic majority in the Congress on pressing domestic issues like health care,” adds Kirsch. “We want to have a system that gives people a choice between regulated insurance or a public plan. If you look around the world, there are lots of hybrid models regulated by the government.” It’s just that kind of approach, though, that Grace-Marie Turner, president of the free-market champion Galen Institute, says can only make matters worse. “Political leaders should foster a more competitive market for insurance by freeing companies to OCTOBER 2008 / MANAGED CARE 21 http://www.MoveOn.org
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