Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) says he's found a cost effective way to address chronic pain, stress, and other illnesses: meditation.
Ryan is urging policymakers to consider adding "mindfulness education"--learning to reduce one's own stress level--to healthcare reform legislation.
"Every day, I meditate for at least 45 minutes before leaving home in the morning," Ryan wrote on his website. "I find it makes me a better listener, and my concentration is sharper. I get less distracted when I'm reading. It's like you see through the clutter of life and can penetrate to what's really going on."
At a hearing last week, Ryan asked HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to keep in mind the positive effects of mindfulness when re-working the nation's healthcare system.
"When we have these discussions about healthcare, there's always an issue we never really talk about, and it's the issue of stress," Ryan said. "A lot of us are seeing it in our Congressional districts because of the economic situation we're dealing with. And the issue of stress leads to, I think, we know, increased illness."
Sebelius agreed that the technique was useful as a form of preventive medicine that could reduce the need for more costly treatments.
"I think it's a prevention strategy that I know has the potential of paying huge dividends," Sebelius said.
I missed this on Friday, but Ezra Klein got his hands on an internal Senate Finance Committee memo that explains the hoped-for timeline on healthcare legislation.
According to the memo, the committee plans to have legislation passed and ready for Obama's signature by October 1. (Though a source told Klein Oct. 15 is more realistic.)
The Finance Committee: According to the memo, Finance will meet next week to discuss the issues where it sees an emergent consensus. These include delivery system and insurance market reforms -- "80-90% of the bill," the memo says. The author also outlines the "3 major sticking points": Public plan, employer pay or play, and financing.
Finance hopes to "drop a mark" -- a draft bill, essentially -- on June 17. The mark up -- where the committee members argue over and edit the draft -- will take place the week of June 22nd. A summary of the bill, along with preliminary scoring data from the Congressional Budget Office, will be available during that period. The "goal for Finance remains a bipartisan product," the memo assures.
[snip]
The overarching goal is to get health care reform to the president's desk by Oct. 1 - though one Finance Committee staffer confirmed the other dates but said the goal is Oct. 15. It's an ambitious schedule, especially when you consider that in 1993, Congress didn't get a draft bill until Nov. 20 -- the last day of the congressional session.
Jeffrey Young obtained first section of Kennedy's draft legislation, by the way, which you can download here. Kennedy's HELP Committee will be sharing jurisdiction with Finance on healthcare.
The Hill has obtained what appears to be a draft version of the healthcare bill Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is planning to mark up later this month.
Howard Dean said yesterday that he favors using budget reconciliation rules to past healthcare reform if Republicans continue to "shill for insurane companies."
WASHINGTON -- Howard Dean said a public health insurance option is more important than bipartisanship, and that Democrats should pass health-care legislation that includes the option with 51 votes if necessary.
[snip]
"If Republicans want to shill for insurance companies, then we should do it with 51 votes," Dean said during a news conference at the first day of the liberal America's Future Now! conference here.
This seems pretty close to the mainstream Democratic view: a bipartisan agreement is preferable, but they're willing to revert to reconciliation if necessary. (Granted, Dean seems to think the former option is unlikely.)
But the following statement probably won't do anything to increase the chances of compromise package:
Dean added that Democrats should have "no intention" of working with Republicans if it's not the strongest possible legislation that could be passed with a simple majority.
Admitting this seems like bad strategy. Even if it's true that Democrats have every intention of getting the "strongest possible legislation" with or without Republicans, why is Dean saying it publicly? He's basically telling Republicans that they can't influence the process, then threatening to circumvent them if they don't participate in process.
Republicans were skeptical, and undoubtedly a little annoyed, when healthcare industry representatives stood behind President Obama last month as he touted their pledge to find ways to reduce national healthcare spending by as much as $2 trillion over 10 years.
The promise wasn't enforceable, they said. The promise didn't come with any details on just where players in the healthcare market planned to find this money, they said. And anyway, what the White House and some spooked lobbying groups saying in the midst of a political battle on healthcare reform doesn't mean a thing when it comes to dollars and cents because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is the only true arbiter on Capitol Hill. All fair points.
So when those same healthcare groups--hospitals, doctors, device makers, drug makers, insurance companies and workers--met Obama's deadline Monday by offering some specifics about their plans, did it make Republican lawmakers any less dubious?
No. No, it did not.
"I'm skeptical that these proposals will add up to anywhere near $2 trillion. In the legislative process, proposals rise or fall based on what CBO says about them, and the same will be true here," Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has hardly been a partisan bomb-thrower on healthcare reform as he and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) continue to hold out hope of getting a deal, said in a statement.
House Ways and Means Committee ranking member Dave Camp (R-Mich.) wins the directness prize, though. Pretty much as soon as the industry groups released their recommendations Monday, Camp fired off a letter to the CBO asking for a cost analysis.
"Perhaps the most difficult issue in the health reform debate is deciding how to pay for it. Hopefully, the CBO can tell us whether these proposals save enough money to help offset the high cost of health reform," Camp said in statement that is not at all sarcastic.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) will meet with liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and other supporters of creating a single-payer national healthcare system--just about the only option for reform Baucus has openly rejected--on Wednesday.
Single-payer advocates have been hopping mad at Democrats, especially since last November's election swept President Obama into the White House and increased the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Despite past support of single-payer healthcare on the part of Obama and other prominent Democrats, such as Sen. Edward Kennedy (Mass.), the party in power has dismissed the political viability of a total federal takeover of the the healthcare system.
Baucus surely hopes the private meeting will include less shouting and fewer insults than he endured during the protests some of these same activists organized at several public Finance Committee meetings this
year. At those same meetings--in between calls for the cops to show up--Baucus promised protesters he'd sit down with them. Looks like it's going to happen.
Baucus has become infamous in Washington's healthcare circles for answering nearly every question about what will be in his health reform bill with the statement "Everything's on the table" but he hasn't been at all shy about blowing off the idea of a single-payer system.
"Everything's on the table, nothing's off the table. Nothing. Nothing, with the possible exception of single-pay," he said recently, for example. "I'm not going to waste my time pushing on something that
isn't going to happen," Baucus has said.
Sanders is an independent who caucuses with Democrats and is the only member of the Senate who currently sponsors legislation to create a European-style government program that could provide healthcare to everyone in America.
Baucus and Sanders will be be joined by several prominent single-payer activists: Rose Ann DeMoro and Geri Jenkins of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (Jenkins is also a vice president of the AFL-CIO); Cornell's Oliver Fein and Harvard's David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program; and Marcia Angell of Harvard, an author and former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, according to a press release issued by Sanders's office Monday.
The chief criticisms are that the healthcare groups weren't very specific about just how they plan to achieve those staggering savings and that there's no way to hold them accountable if they don't.
Obama sought to answer those criticisms Tuesday in a thank-you note he sent to the leaders of the organizations that made the promise.
"I will hold you to your pledge to get this one," Obama wrote. "I would like you to update my administration by early June on the progress you have made toward fulfilling this important commitment."
The president sent the letter to the heads of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, America's Health Insurance Plans, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Service Employees International Union's healthcare division.
Don't know whether they're trying to piggyback on President Obama's big announcement on healthcare or whether they're trying to hide it, but the Senate Finance Committee issued a report Monday outlining the options of the table to expand healthcare coverage to the uninsured.
There's an awful lot in the 63-page document: Ideas for expanding Medicaid, offering tax credits to individuals and small businesses for private coverage and enacting health insurance market reforms, to name a few. But the biggie has got to be the outline of several different ways to create a new public plan people could choose instead of private insurance.
Basically, the Finance Committee -- which is set to mark up a comprehensive healthcare reform bill in about a month -- is looking at creating up a government-run program that looks like Medicare, creating regional plans administered by private insurers or having the public plan run by the states.
Though Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) jointly issued the report, they're on opposite sides about whether to create a public plan option at all. The committee held a public roundtable discussion last week to debate coverage options.
Baucus and Grassley released a similar report last month detailing the committee's set of proposals on reforming the healthcare delivery system. On Tuesday, the panel will convene for the last of three "roundtables," during which they will discuss how to finance the $1 trillion-plus the healthcare bill is expected to cost.
President Obama formally announced an agreement with healthcare industry groups Monday under which national healthcare spending could be reduced by $2 trillion over 10 years.
"What's brought us all together today is a recognition that we can't continue down the same dangerous road we've been traveling for so many years; that costs are out of control; and that reform is not a luxury that can be postponed, but a necessity that cannot wait," Obama said.
The White House previewed the announcement Sunday and issued the letter from America's Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the American Hospital Association, the Advanced Medical Technology Association and the Service Employees International Union outlining their plans on Monday.
- Jeffrey Young
Below is a transcript of the president's full speech:
The wonkosphere is abuzz today with news that five healthcare industry groups and at least one major union will meet with Obama at the White House today to announce a new cost-savings initiative.
The plan aims to cut the rate of growth in healthcare costs by 1.5 percent each year for 10 years--a total of $2 trillion.
The stakeholders: Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America (PhRMA); Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed); America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP); the American Hospital Association (AHA); the American Medical Association (AMA); and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
What does this mean? All of the groups (except SEIU) have been major opponents of healthcare reform in recent years, and continue to oppose a public insurance plan to compete with private insurers.
Regardless, the consensus is that this is unequivocally good news for Obama's hopes of pushing through big, comprehensive healthcare reform this year.
The mere sight of these groups standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Obama will give reform additional political momentum, driving an even bigger wedge between health industry groups and their erstwhile allies in the conservative movement--where dismay over the behavior of AHIP and other groups is becoming louder by the day.
The event will also give lawmakers in Congress political cover for proposing bolder changes to the payment and delivery systems--the kind that might make reform seem more affordable, at least in the eyes of the all-important Congressional Budget Office.
This is big -- and I'm not talking about the news. I'm talking about the dealmaking between unions, corporations, the health insurance companies and hospitals. And there all going to be at the White House tomorrow. What's the bottom line political significance of all of this: it means that the White House is gonna get health care reform, this year.
The fact that the medical-industrial complex is trying to shape health care reform rather than block it is a tremendously good omen. It looks as if America may finally get what every other advanced country already has: a system that guarantees essential health care to all its citizens.
And serious cost control would change everything, not just for health care, but for America's fiscal future. As Mr. Orszag has emphasized, rising health care costs are the main reason long-run budget projections look so grim. Slow the rate at which those costs rise, and the future will look far brighter.
I still won't count my health care chickens until they're hatched. But this is some of the best policy news I've heard in a long time.
So there you have it. Politically, this is nothing but good news for the administration. It will be infinitely harder for Republicans to oppose a reform package when the major industry groups--these are the Harry and Louise people--are on board, at least in principle.
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