They came; they sat; they talked. And talked. And EBA’s health care reform panel watched and listened.
And when the White House health care summit was over, both President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans probably got what they wanted out of the Feb. 25 meeting, several panelists concluded. There were no surprises or new ideas, and both sides came off as reasonable and thoughtful. There was no shouting or scorched earth – but little meaningful agreement either.
“The summit didn’t provide the tabloid talk show drama that some were predicting, nor did it produce a bipartisan compromise on how to advance bipartisan legislation,” said Diane Boyle, VP of Federal Government Relations for the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors.
Boyle gave the president points for making modifications to his original reform proposal that “significantly improved” it. However, the president’s proposal to apply a 2.9% Medicare tax on income from annuities “is causing alarm bells to go off” at NAIFA, she said.
“Partisan politics continues to reign supreme,” said Tom Scheutz, of Group Services, Inc. in Bettendorf, Iowa. The timing of the president’s revamped health care reform proposal — it was released just three days before the summit — sent a message about what the president really means when he asks Republicans in Congress to be flexible, says Scheutz: “It means they have to agree with his ideas.” Thus, the summit served the president’s PR purposes, “so he could claim that he was reaching out to Republicans but they just weren’t willing to listen,” Scheutz believes.
So the president and Democratic leadership continue to focus on expanding access to care and controlling costs by intervening in the insurance marketplace, several panelists noted, when a better approach would be to seek a market-driven solution to cost containment. “Somehow, congressional Democrats want to disassociate the cost drivers from required payments,” noted Dave Lapka, president of D360, a logistics consulting company. “It’s been proven time and time again, if people are empowered and incentivized to reduce their medical costs, they will figure out how to do that. Whether it’s a slight inconvenience, changed behavior, follow-through on a provided treatment, etc., people will incur lower costs if the system rewards those behaviors in some way. None of this is even remotely included in what is being proposed – in fact, the opposite is being incentivized.”
Other panelists agreed. “We have a president and Congress that are about to reach the top of the ladder only to find that the ladder is against the wrong building,” said Scheutz.
The bottom line: While neither side won or lost on the merits, the president may well have come out ahead simply by moving the goal line. That is, by refusing to accept defeat of his health care plan, he is keeping the issue open and the players on the field — and buying time for the House Democratic leadership to corral enough votes to pass a slimmed-down bill without any hint of Republican support.
