Healthcare Monday: Reform was the focus from the start

Former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag made healthcare reform a top priority from the very start, The Hill's Walter Alarkon reports. http://bit.ly/dbGYeU

"The daily schedules for Orszag, who left his position as Office of Management and Budget director in August, reveal that he and key White House aides regularly met to discuss healthcare starting in January 2009, within days of Obama entering office," Alarkon writes. "Orszag also took meetings with insurance executives and health experts as the White House made health reform its top legislative priority after enacting the $814 billion stimulus."

Alarkon obtained Orszag’s schedules — from January to August 2009 — through the Freedom of Information Act.

This comes as little surprise. Orszag, when he entered the White House, was already among the loudest Washington voices calling for healthcare reform. As director of the Congressional Budget Office in 2007 and 2008, he repeatedly warned Congress that the nation’s healthcare spending — both public and private — was out of control and needed reining in.

The message had several themes, and it was as terse as it was consistent: 

(1) Healthcare spending is unsustainable at its current rate of growth. 

(2) The root of the crisis is not the aging population, but the cost to treat each patient as a result of ever-evolving technologies, treatments and drugs that everyone wants. 

(3) Roughly 30 percent of all treatments and procedures do little or nothing to improve the health of patients, so if those interventions can be identified and weeded out, healthcare costs would fall without harming patient care.

(4) Medicare and Medicaid cannot be made solvent without reforming the healthcare delivery system as a whole.

(5) However draconian the changes appear in the near term (think: tax hikes, benefit cuts and cost-sharing for patients), they’ll be nothing relative to the changes that would have to be made if lawmakers don't act soon. 

Fourteen months later, the White House enacted its healthcare reform bill. Time will tell how well it addresses the problems Orszag set out to fix.

Eyes on Virginia

Oral arguments begin Monday in Virginia's suit challenging the constitutionality of the health reform law. 

Florida made headlines last week when a federal judge ruled that a similar suit against the individual insurance mandate could proceed. Earlier in the month a Michigan judge dismissed yet another suit on the topic, ruling that Congress does indeed have the right to require individuals to purchase healthcare coverage or face a fine. 

Common message: This issue, it seems, is headed for the Supreme Court.

White House not too worried about the lawsuits

"This is nothing new," Stephanie Cutter, assistant to the president for special projects, wrote Friday on the White House blog.

"We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act —constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation, and all of those challenges failed," Cutter said. http://bit.ly/crc3MM

Good news for Part D beneficiaries

Costs for most seniors enrolled in Medicare's prescription drug benefit won't jump nearly as high next year as initially thought, an independent group reported this week. 

Avalere Health, a Washington-based policy group, estimates the average monthly premium for Part D's top 10 plans (by enrollment) will rise 0.2 percent in 2011 — a far cry from the 10 percent hike the same group estimated last month. http://bit.ly/dtFEhG

A bipartisan push to repeal healthcare reform?

That's what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is predicting. 

"About bipartisanship after the election, I predict there will be a good bit of effort," Graham said Sunday on "Face the Nation." 

"There will be a bipartisan effort to extend the Bush tax cuts and not let them expire. [In] 2012 and 2014, Democrats in swing states are going to get the message from independent voters to come to the middle. So I think we're going to have some bipartisanship when it comes to replacing the healthcare bill with a more moderate approach." http://bit.ly/9hiigA

The big question Graham and other repeal supporters face: How to get rid of the unpopular elements of the bill (e.g., the individual mandate) without also getting rid of the popular reforms (such as the prohibition on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions), which are inextricably linked to each other? 

Insurance battle heats up in the Northwest

Washington state's leading insurance regulator is ordering a top insurance company to resume selling its child-only healthcare plans. 

On Sept. 27, Washington's Regence BlueShield — the largest individual insurer in the state — announced it would stop selling policies only for children beginning Oct. 1.

But the decision didn't sit well with state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, who told the company Friday that it has to resume that coverage.

"Regence is in clear violation of state law that prohibits insurers from denying insurance to people on the basis of age,” Kreidler said in a statement.

Kreidler said the change "had a serious impact on Washington families and could’ve had a devastating impact on the insurance market."

"Frankly, Regence deserves the backlash from its decision. It overreacted and now finds itself in violation of the law."