Health Care Reform to be Put to a Test
Friday, November 20, 2009SUSIE GHARIB: The clock is ticking toward an important vote tomorrow on health care reform. At 8:00 p.m. Eastern time, the Senate will take a procedural vote on health care. It needs to get 60 votes so lawmakers can begin debate on the Senate's $848 billion health care plan. The outcome hinges on dollars and cents. As Darren Gersh reports, holding down costs is a key concern.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The Senate health care bill contains almost every cost-saving strategy known to Washington. First, there is the tax strategy. By taxing high-cost insurance plans, health analyst Joe Antos says Congress is giving employers and workers an incentive to cut costs or pay higher taxes if they don't.
JOE ANTOS, HEALTH CARE ANALYST, AEI: If we don't try to put some financial pressure on insurers and on providers to find some way to create more efficient practice styles, then we'll never get out of this box.
GERSH: Then there is the payment strategy. Congress is pushing to tweak the wages Medicare pays doctors and hospitals. The idea is to encourage them to use more cost-effective treatment options. The Senate bill also counts $210 billion in other savings in payments to doctors. But Antos thinks this is a budgetary illusion, because every year for the last seven years, Congress has rolled that cut back.
ANTOS: In the end, they will succumb to the inevitable pressure from senior citizens especially and from doctors, hospitals and others who are going to say we can't put up with this.
GERSH: The other big cost-containment idea is the expert strategy. A commission of experts will convene and search for savings beginning in 2015. Budget expert Chuck Marr says the cost cuts would go into effect unless Congress said no or found savings elsewhere.
CHUCK MARR, CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES: Sort of a back stop for insurance over time to provide more savings, if costs get more unsustainable.
GERSH: Many of these strategies will take years to enact and the exact savings are difficult to predict. But health economist Tim Waidmann says millions of Americans shouldn't have to wait for a perfect solution to rising health care costs.
TIM WAIDMANN, HEALTH ECONOMIST: And then if we wait to do access until after that's done, then we're going to be 20 years in the future before we say, OK, now we can afford to cover everybody.
GERSH: The final cost containment strategy is the China option. Everyone on Capitol Hill knows if we don't hold down our health care spending, the rest of the world may one day grow tired of lending us the money to pay our bills. Darren Gersh, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Washington.
