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CCH® HR MANAGEMENT - 01/16/09

Congressional staffers predict 2009 is the year for major health care reform

Once President-elect Barack Obama, Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Tom Daschle and a Democrat-led Congress take office in 2009, broad scale health care reforms are likely to occur, predicted congressional staffers who spoke at a recent Alliance for Health Reform and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation forum in Washington, D.C.

"We have a great opportunity this year to get health care reform done if everyone is willing to work together on it," said Mark Hayes, the Republican Health Policy Advisor for the Senate Finance Committee, adding that the cost of not acting for another 15 years would be too high. "Federal health spending growth is unsustainable," he said.

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) stands ready to work with Obama, Daschle, and leadership in Congress "to ensure that we actually do achieve the goal of comprehensive reform," said his aide Jocelyn Moore. "The window is open extremely wide and all options are on the table," she said. She said Congress must "increase coverage and affordability, improve quality, and eliminate unnecessary health care spending." She also emphasized the need for more effective preventative care and for broad-based insurance market reform.

John McDonough, a health aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Health Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee, said Kennedy "is committed to achieving comprehensive universal health reform in this coming Congress."

"I don't think Senator Kennedy has ever been more confident of our ability to actually deliver on the promise of national health reform than we are right now," McDonough said. "We are looking forward very much to pursuing this on a bipartisan basis," he added.

Chuck Clapton, GOP Health Policy Director on the HELP Committee, who spoke on his own behalf, said that while there is very strong support for health care reform among Republicans, Congress faces many competing priorities, such as stimulating the sagging economy and revising the tax code. Also, lawmakers face a tight budget, as the deficit could exceed a trillion dollars next year, he said.

Republican members, Clapton said, are committed to a market-based delivery system. "We really have to have an agreement that emphasizes that we want private plans delivering this benefit," he said, adding that "private plans hold the best opportunity to drives innovation, to promote value, and also to preserve people's choices."

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