Obama trying to seize the moment on health care reform — MedCity Morning Read, June 19, 2009

Pres. Barack Obama in Green Bay, Wis.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Who could have predicted after the presidential election last year that the Obama administration would be so well-positioned by June of this year to achieve a major victory in health care? the New York Times asks.

As the economy faltered and people focused on Wall Street and Detroit, it seemed unthinkable that Congress would spend this summer devoted to the costly proposition of health insurance for all — something that has eluded presidents since Theodore Roosevelt, the Times said.

But five months after the inauguration, health care debates can be heard on Pennsylvania Avenue and Main Street. What better time for President Obama to hit the campaign trail again, this time to stump for health care reform? That’s exactly what he’s done. He held his first town-hall meeting on health care change in Green Bay, Wis., last week.

This week, members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions began a formal draft of their overhaul plan, realizing through outbursts of partisan anger that the resulting bill probably would take more time to get go President Obama’s desk than expected.

Meanwhile, the influential Senate Finance Committee delayed the release of its own proposal until after the Fourth of July because of emerging concerns about its cost, the Times said. A draft proposal circulated among finance committee members Thursday differed significantly from President Obama’s goals, the Washington Post said.

Now, President Obama rarely passes a day without a high-profile pitch about health care reform. On Monday, he tried to get doctors behind a plan for changeat the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in Chicago. On Tuesday, Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget said the nation’s future economic prosperity depends reforming health care in a Financial Times opinion piece. On Thursday, the president held a streamed, interactive blogging event for doctors on the topic of sickness prevention and wellness.

Students of White House history know that now is the risky phase of the debate when real details begin to create real opposition to a plan for change, according to the Times. On Monday, the American Hospital Association said it was deeply disappointed in President Obama’s weekend proposal to pay for health care reform by cutting Medicare reimbursements to hospitals by $220 billion over 10 years. The next day, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would oppose reform efforts that included a new government insurance option, a requirement that businesses provide health coverage to workers, or the creation of a federal board to set insurance benefits.

By mid-week, Congressional Budget Office analyses had showed that proposed reform plans likely would generate less savings, cover fewer unisured Americans and cost more than expected, sending policymakers back to their drawing boards.

Kathleen Sebelius, the nation’s secretary of health and human services, summed up the undulations in the reform process: “There will be a lot of times when it appears that everything is falling apart,” the Times said. Sebelius also commented on President Obama’s “absolute focus on the fact that this is a moment — we’re not going to lose this moment,” according to the Times.

More stories worth a read:

• A new public health plan: How congressional details will impact doctors and patients (Heritage Foundation)
• Obama’s unhealthy reform (Newsweek)
• Obama’s doctor knocks ObamaCare (Forbes)
• Nurses decry ‘cruel ruse’ of GOP health plan (PRNewswire)
• As SBIR bill passes to Senate, venture industry not pleased (Wall Street Journal Venture Capital Dispatch blog)
• Biotechnology Industry Organization commends Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship’s SBIR reauthorization (BIO)
• Exact Sciences to move headquarters to Wisconsin (Mass High Tech)
• Medtronic made $850,000 in payments to surgeon who Army says wrote bogus study (Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune)
• This doctor (at the Cleveland Clinic) does not want to see you (Time magazine)
• HUD to offer new mortgage option for hospitals (FierceHealthcare)
• 81 U.S. health care workers have H1N1 virus (Los Angeles Times)
• Cardinal Foundation sends $1 million in medical grants (Business First Columbus)
• Funding for global health quadruples, to $22 billion (Wall Street Journal Health blog)
• Scrushy ordered to pay $2.8 billion for HealthSouth fraud (Birmingham Business Journal)
• Government Accounting Office review finds fault in FDA’s device oversight (Covering Health blog)

[Photo credit: President Obama talks to Green Bay, Wis., town-hall meeting audience about health care reform, June 11, 2009, White House photo by Chuck Kennedy]