Health Politics

The hope of bipartisan and comprehensive health care legislation lives on today thanks to the vote in the Finance Committee of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).  The bill reported out of the Finance Committee is bipartisan.  Not just because it received support from members of both parties, but because you can see both Republican and Democratic values in the solution. 

For Republicans, the bill relies heavily on market forces and incentives, and it slows the rate of health care cost growth to the tune of reduced budget deficits.  For Democrats, the bill finally provides all Americans access to quality health coverage and strengthens the Medicare program for our nation's seniors. 

As Sen. Snowe and others said, this bill is not perfect.  It will likely be improved along the way.  But it does get serious about solving the access, quality, and cost problems in our health system.  While addressing these challenges on a bipartisan basis requires tough choices, it does not require lawmakers to abandon their underlying goals. It is in her willingness to find policy solutions that will actually solve our health care crisis that Sen. Snowe outshines her colleagues on her side of the aisle on the Finance Committee. 

Let the record show that the Senate Finance Committee approved bipartisan health reform legislation today, and that America took a giant step toward becoming a better country.

The fifth committee has spoken. The Senate Finance Committee led by Montana Democrat Max Baucus just passed its health reform bill, 14-9. All Democrats, liberals and moderates, backed the bill, along with one Republican moderate, Olympia Snowe of Maine.

As several of the committee members noted, this puts America closer to health reform than it's ever been in the nearly 100 years since President Theodore Roosevelt first demanded that we cover everybody.

Now, after the Finance and Senate HELP bill are melded (not an easy task we know, but none of this has been easy and we've come far) the full Senate will vote. And the House.

 As the director of New America's health policy program Len Nichols said, "America got better today."

Sen. Olympia Snowe said she will vote for health reform in the Finance Committee, although she recited a long list of concerns she wants to address before she casts a "yes" vote for final passage on the Senate floor. But on balance, she said, history is calling for action.

She likened the status quo in health care to sailing the Titanic, but added that unlike the captain of the Titanic, we know there's an iceberg ahead.

 UPDATE: Video of Snowe's statement below, courtesy of TPMDC:

When a lobby -- like AHIP, the health insurance lobby -- pushes out a report intended to inflict last minute damage on an important bill late on a Sunday on a three-day weekend, they may score a few points in the first wave of headlines but ultimately the truth wins out. Not only did the second-day headlines (like Politico's "Insurers Face Blowback") note the questions about the AHIP report’s veracity, even the consulting company that wrote the report, PricewaterhouseCoopers, basically said it was a meaningless exercise in the application of irrelevant assumptions. In other words, AHIP got what it paid for.

PricewaterhouseCoopers said:

We're resuming our tweeting of the Senate Finance Committee mark up today. You can follow our coverage of the event live on Twitter (tag: #SFC). Today, the Committee is expected to take a final vote on the modified bill.

The gloves are off in the fight for health reform, and the insurance industry has decided that it's time to start throwing analytically indefensible punches. Two recent cases in point: (1) the headline grabbing "report" entitled the "Potential Impact of Health Reform the Cost of Private Health Insurance Coverage," by PriceWaterhouseCoopers , for AHIP (the main health insurance industry trade group); and (2) the "Blue Perspective" entitled "Age Discounts ‘A Must' to Encourage Young Adults to Purchase Insurance," by the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. 

Thankfully the Urban Institute, in work funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has recently released a thorough and devastating rebuttal to the Blue claims.  So my comments below focus mostly on the AHIP paper. 

When the Finance Committe finally votes on its health care bill (probably Tuesday), all eyes will be on Maine Republican Olympia Snowe. But we'd like to point out:

-- if she votes "yes" in committee, it's a good sign but not a sure thing that she will vote "yes" on the floor and again on a final House-Senate compromise.

-- if she votes "no," it does not mean that she will not ultimately vote "yes" on the floor or on the conference report.

And one Snowe story:

Six years ago, one of my nieces, then 12, was visiting us in Washington, and I took her to the Hill with me. She's a suburban kid, and I forgot to warn her to hold on tight when the little Hart building subway car pulled out from under the Capitol. She lost her balance, and landed in the lap of Sen. Snowe.

As usual, Sen. Snowe was very gracious and I introduced them.  "Sen. Snowe, this is my niece Tikva. Tikva, this is Sen. Snowe. Sen. Snowe has great clothes and lots of power."

Snowe smiled. "I'm not sure about the power."

Wonder what Max Baucus and Harry Reid think about her fashion sense these days.

Battleground or common ground? What is the state of the health care debate? The answer is "Yes" according Bill Galston of the Brookings Institute, who in conjunction with World Public Opinion, has released findings from an insightful new survey (watch video from the polls release after the break).

In the field from September 26 to October 5, the poll goes beyond the standard topline analysis to provide a nuanced picture of public opinion on health care.

The first part of the survey looked at Americans' views on the role of government in health care, their assessment of the current situation, and their reaction to the current debate. The poll digs deep, illustrating both areas of consensus on specific policies as well as long standing divisions on basic assumptions behind reform.

In health care, everyone has a story, one that shows how our current system fails us and why the need for reform is so urgent.

There's the worried parent whose grown child doesn't have health insurance, either because they can't afford it or don't think they need it. There's the women whose preventive screening caught a chronic disease early, and whose premiums promptly skyrocketed. And then there's the mother who went to three different hospitals before her daughter was properly diagnosed, only to find that her insurance wouldn't cover treatments the company deemed experimental.

We heard all of these stories and more at health care roundtable this week hosted by Politics Magazine (read some of their coverage of the events here and here).

Our colleague Julie Barnes, deputy director of New America's Health Policy Program. moderated the panel on "the future of healthcare reform and public funding." With Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), former Rep. Martin Frost (D-TX), and former Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-CT).

In 1993-94, then Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, a Kansas Republican who had presidential ambitions and a hankering to regain his position as Senate Majority Leader, helped kill President Bill Clinton's health reform initiative.

Fifteen years leader, he regrets letting politics trump policy, and he is urging fellow Republicans not to repeat his mistake.

"I want this to pass," he said. "I don't agree with everything Obama is presenting, but we've got to do something." He added that he expected to see a Rose Garden signing ceremony within months.

Dole joins a lengthening parade of prominent Republicans, including Bill Frist, in endorsing health reform. (They may not change many minds in a polarized Congress, but might be a help to centrists in both parties. Having Frist and Dole on board would make it easier for someone like Republican Olympia Snowe to vote yes... and harder for a moderate Democrat like Ben Nelson to vote no.)