Shaheen, Gregg attend White House health care summit

HEALTH SUMMIT

New Hampshire Union Leader

Jillian Jorgensen

Boston University Washington News Service

March 5, 2009

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama invited a group of lawmakers—including Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H.—and  insurance, labor and medical officials to the White House Thursday to discuss how to reform the country’s health care system.

In his opening remarks to the group of more than 100 attending the summit, Obama called the “exploding cost” of health care “one of the greatest threats not just to the well-being of our families and the prosperity of our businesses, but to the very foundation of our economy.”

“Our goal will be to enact comprehensive health care reform by the end of this year. That is our commitment. That is our goal,” Obama told the group.

The president called a seat at the summit “the hottest ticket in town.”

After the opening remarks the group split into “break-out sessions” before offering the president comments and questions.

Shaheen said in an interview after the summit that at the break-out session she attended, the participants – ranging from Democrats to Republicans, labor, small business and pharmacology representatives to advocates for AIDS patients and Native Americans – agreed on the need to move to a system focused on wellness rather than illness, to promote primary and preventative care, and to address the health care workforce, which is lacking doctors and nurses.

“We need to look at what works, look at the outcomes, look at evidence-based treatments and procedures. And when we do that, that will help drive down costs,” she said.

Gregg said the meeting was constructive, but that not much consensus was reached.

“It would be difficult to get much consensus in a first meeting like this,” he said in an interview after the meeting.

Gregg said he believed reform was possible in the next year or 18 months if taken in parts, but that to do one massive overhaul in that time would be more difficult.

“I think it’s a possibility, if you don’t try to do the whole thing at once. If you just take some chunks of it and try to address those issues I think you could make some strides,” he said.

For the summit’s closing remarks, Obama entered with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.,who has been away from Washington while fighting a malignant brain tumor.

“I'm looking forward to being a foot soldier in this undertaking,” Kennedy said. “And this time, we will not fail.”

Shaheen agreed with the sentiment.

“Failure is not an option. We’ve got address this, we’ve got to address the individuals and families who are struggling because they don’t have health care and the businesses who can’t be competitive because of the cost of health care,” she said.

Shaheen said the president pointed out in his closing remarks that Congress would be in control of the details of the plan.

“It’s going to be the Congress that really puts the details on health care reform and that really fleshes that out,” she said.

She said the proposals for reform in the Senate have so far been bi-partisan. She added that representatives from the business, hospital and pharmacology industries and labor officials were also prepared to get down to work.

“The feeling was that all of the players who need to be at the table understand the urgency of addressing this issue,” she said.

Gregg said making wealthier people pay a fair share of their Medicare premiums, allowing people to take advantages of facilities that are producing higher quality care at a lower cost, and increasing investment in health information technology were areas where there was a great deal of bi-partisan support.

But he was not without his concerns.

“I’m worried about a lot of things, but I’m most concerned about undermining the quality of health care and the research efforts in this country, by having the government overly nationalize the system,” he said.

He was also concerned about “creating an atmosphere where there’s no incentive for people to be thoughtful purchasers of health care, and we just pass all the cost on to the taxpayers and the debt.”

During the closing remarks, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., asked Obama if he thought the method proposed by Gregg and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., for fast-tracking entitlement reform might help in the overhaul of Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

“Although he didn’t endorse it, he didn’t say that he was opposed either,” Gregg said.  “It was in play as far as he was concerned.”

Gregg said he agreed with Obama that Social Security was an easier fix than health care, because it was less complex. Using the Conrad-Gregg approach, “we could do Social Security before the end of the summer. That would be a nice win. It would be a very bipartisan event,” he said.

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