For healthcare reform, it’s all systems go

Nancy-Ann DeParle is the new director of the White House Office of Health Reform. I had the opportunity to hear her initial thoughts on reform opportunities at a recent press conference hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

In person, DeParle carries the same attitude of openness and responsiveness that President Obama seems to project on television. While she certainly had some prepared answers to the media’s questions ready in her head, she didn’t deliver a rehearsed speech or do any clever dodging.

She knows healthcare is in dire need of restructuring, and, being a former leader for the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the old Health Care Finance Administration, DeParle is fully cognizant of the political forces at work.

“Unlike the effort 15 years ago, Congress has put its money where its mouth is, and it’s already enacted a budget resolution that has healthcare reform,” she said.

Another observation she made, which seems to be a recent development, is the way stakeholders are increasingly accepting the fact that their business is going to change and they’ll have a better outlook by embracing it rather than fighting it.

“What I found remarkable is that no one wants the status quo,” DeParle said. “They don’t start off talking about their position. They talk about, ‘how do we get everyone covered? How do we lower costs for businesses and families?’”

The talk is coming not just from patient advocates or payers, but from providers themselves, she said.

She reiterated the president’s message that health reform must happen this year, and I see nothing indicating that it won’t.

Two weeks ago, Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) confirmed in a letter to the president their plans to mark up separate reform bills in June. They cited having a “moral duty” to enact reform that will ensure coverage and ensure that the country is getting its money’s worth out of healthcare.

SPEAK UP

Speaking of getting your money’s worth, I also attended a listening session of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research—the panel of federal health agency leaders that is in charge of directing research to compare medical treatments head-to-head. Ideally, the data it produces will help uncover which treatments are actually worth our hard-earned dollars.

There were at least 200 people listening and 31 people speaking, which was surprising to me. A gamut of healthcare organizations, lobbyists and really anyone who wanted to could have their three minutes on the microphone to talk about what they wanted from the council.

One of the common themes that ran throughout was the call for patient involvement and representation in the council’s process of deciding which treatments to study, how to disseminate the information, and most importantly, where patient values would fit in. “Researchers see outcomes one way, but patients see it another,” a lobbyist from Consumers Union said.

Here we are on the brink of reform, with government leaders promising cooperation and timely action, and average Americans asking to get involved. The thought struck me that we might actually do this. Healthcare reform might actually happen!

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