Democrats, who still control Congress in the lame-duck session the rest of the year, “are going to be tempted to kick this can off into January,” said Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, in a panel discussion hosted by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Democrats would “rather leave the very difficult choices” to the Republican-controlled House, he said.
Mr. Ornstein, John Rother of the AARP and Dean Rosen, former chief healthcare adviser to Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), made three other points on how the recent election would influence the healthcare reform law:
1. Healthcare was not the focus of the election. Since the election was mainly about the economy and jobs, the public does not want Congress to spend a whole lot of energy on healthcare, Mr. Rother said. However, Mr. Rosen noted the law became a symbol of an important election issue, government overreach.
2. Removing the individual mandate won’t be easy. Even though the law’s unpopular mandate for individuals to buy insurance is the primary target of many legal challenges, the mandate is inextricably interwoven with popular parts of the law, notably the requirement that insurers accept individuals with preexisting conditions. “If you take out [the individual mandate] and say that of course, you’ll keep the ban on [denying coverage for people with] pre-existing conditions, you are left with an impossible situation,” Mr. Ornstein said.
3. Drugmakers still basically support the law. Mr. Rother said the pharmaceuticals industry still supports the reform law, with perhaps a few small changes. “Any objective observer” would say the pharma industry came out well, Mr. Ornstein noted.
Read the Wall Street Journal Health Blog report on physician fee cuts.
Read more coverage on the physician fee fix:
– AMA: 94% of Americans Concerned About Upcoming Physician Fee Cut
– AMA Leader: Failure to Avert Looming Fee Cut Would be ‘Catastrophe’
– AMA Wants New Federal Panel to Propose Permanent Fee Fix to Congress
