Today, members of Congress are agonizing over legislative language and Congressional Budget Office reports, trying to find the right mixture of programs and policies to make a dent in future healthcare spending growth.
If a new study from the University of Chicago is correct, much of this work will be akin to building barriers from sand to try to prevent a tidal wave rapidly encroaching upon land.
Last week HLC participated in the Women in Technology roundtable event which gave their members an overview about the role of technology in health reform as it relates to electronic medical records, care management, and identity.
“Women in Technology hosted a roundtable event to give their members a closer look at how healthcare policy intersects with technology. The presentations dove into where our government is heading when it comes to Health IT. Particularly when it comes to Electronic Health Records, the speakers focused on the recent progress in moving these life- (and money-) saving technologies forward.
HLC believes the nationwide use of health information technology, including the development of uniform standards for information-sharing and a national patient privacy standard will create quality improvements and greater patient safety. I would like to thank Shana for highlighting our efforts on health information technology.
There was a great deal of hoopla Saturday night over the Senate Democratic leadership’s success in gaining the minimum 60 votes necessary to bring health reform legislation to the floor to begin debate after the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s perhaps a story in itself that there was so much drama over a procedural vote simply to allow debate on the President’s signature policy issue.
Despite Saturday’s successful vote, the road to health reform enactment seems more fraught with potholes than ever. The Capitol Hill newspaper, Politico, has a good summary story today on the current state of play, headlined, “How Health Reform Could Fall Apart.” Sunday’s news shows and interviews undermined any supposed momentum that was claimed on Saturday. Centrist senators made it clear that they will not vote for a bill that includes the current public option language. Senators on the left, like Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), said Sunday that they’ve compromised on the issue as much as they’re going to.
• I wouldn’t have thought it possible to draft a health reform bill larger than the House’s 1,990 pages, but the Senate weighed in at 2,074.
I would like to thank the StandardNet for publishing my op-ed piece on the need to reset the current health reform debate in order to win back the public’s confidence.