Full preview from "The Pink Sheet" DAILY December 23, 2008
House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark, D-Calif., is predicting that any congressional votes on comprehensive health care reform legislation will take place toward the end of 2009 or, at the latest, early the following year. Find out why...
Full Article reprinted from "The Pink Sheet" DAILY December 23, 2008
Rep. Stark Sees Health Reform Votes In Late 2009/Early 2010, “Deferred Maintenance” Items Sooner
House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Pete Stark, D-Calif., is predicting that any congressional votes on comprehensive health care reform legislation will take place toward the end of 2009 or, at the latest, early the following year.
The near-term focus for Congress will be "deferred maintenance" health issues, he said.
With the incoming Obama administration making health care reform a high profile issue, stakeholders from many sides are eager to get to work on the issue quickly. President-elect Barack Obama recently said he hopes to convene key parties "early" in the administration, and his HHS Secretary-nominee Tom Daschle will kick off a series of forums to obtain grass-roots perspectives.
But Stark suggested that the eagerness should be tempered by legislative realities. "I don't think you can have a complete reform plan" in the first 100 days of Congress, he said. "We have so much deferred maintenance. We have to figure out what to do about [the State Children's Health Insurance Program], what to do about [Medicare] paying the doctors, what to do about health information technology, all these things Republicans ignored for the eight years."
Stark urges colleagues to wait for Obama reform guidelines...
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