Liberal groups promise to promote President Obama's healthcare reform
02 06 09 - 11:34
Liberal groups bolster Obama healthcare plans
By Lisa Wangsness - The Boston Globe
WASHINGTON - Leaders of the country's largest and most influential liberal groups said yesterday they are poised to spend $82 million to help push through sweeping healthcare legislation this year.
Gathering at a conference to discuss how to promote President Obama's agenda, the leaders said Americans voted for major change last November, and that liberals would fight to help the Obama administration keep its promises on providing universal access to affordable healthcare, as well as immigration reform and education.
"Progressives are fired up and excited about the possibility of what could be the greatest era of progressive reform since 1960," said Richard Borosage, codirector of the Campaign for America's Future. "We do this with the wind at our back."
Joining the effort are two major labor organizations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win; Health Care for America Now, a coalition of healthcare providers, consumer groups, and activists; MoveOn.org, the massive online activist organization; and other groups that claim a total of 30 million members.
Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Obama's campaign, the former Vermont governor, and author of a forthcoming book on healthcare, said liberal groups would insist that any health legislation include a Medicare-style public insurance option for people under 65.
Forcing insurers to compete with a government plan, Dean said, is the only way to lower premiums dramatically. Asked whether it was more important to have a public option than to have healthcare bill with bipartisan support, Dean said, without hesitating, "Yes."
"I think bipartisan is wonderful, but what is the point of having a crummy piece of legislation just because it's bipartisan?" he said.
On the other side of the debate, health industry groups yesterday followed through on their pledge to detail how they would achieve the $2.1 trillion in savings over the next decade they promised Obama last month. The groups, which include the most important lobbies representing doctors, drug companies, medical device companies, hospitals, insurers, and the Service Employees International Union, outlined changes they would make that they said would, over time, transform the healthcare system.
They said they could simplify administrative systems to save $500 billion to $700 billion; help people avoid $150 billion to $180 billion in unnecessary care; and improve the treatment of chronic disease, particularly obesity, to save $350 billion to $800 billion over the next 10 years. Insurers, for example, promised a comprehensive overhaul of claims processing that they said would be a "watershed" event as dramatic as the introduction of ATMs to the banking system.
But the industry will have to continue to press its case to convince doubters in Congress. "I'm skeptical that these proposals will add up to anywhere near $2 trillion," Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement.
The White House is continuing to make its case for a health overhaul, issuing a report last night from the president's Council of Economic Advisers that said lowering healthcare costs and improving access is crucial for the country's long-term economic prosperity.
Slowing the annual growth rate of healthcare costs by 1.5 percentage points, the study said, would increase the country's overall economic output by 2 percent in 2020 and by nearly 8 percent in 2030.