The Health Care Reform Corner – From the editors of "The Pink Sheet" May 19, 2009
What are policymakers and stakeholders in Washington saying and doing about health care reform? In this periodic BioPharma Today feature, the editors of"The Pink Sheet" and "The Pink Sheet" DAILY highlight some of the major developments chronicled in those publications.
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The Health Care Reform Corner – From the editors of "The Pink Sheet" May 19, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The White House is expecting a private sector health care coalition – including the pharmaceutical industry – to produce details in early June on a pledge to help reduce the annual health care spending growth rate by 1.5 percentage points over the next 10 years. That may be more difficult than it seems. When the coalition's offer was announced by Obama May 11, few details were released. The announcement followed a meeting between the president and the coalition at the White House. The group said in a join statement that individual organizations "are currently engaged in an intensive process to develop proposals to reduce the rate of increase in future health care costs. ... We look forward to offering cost-savings recommendations in the weeks ahead.” Read the story here…
The Senate Finance Committee is considering three possible versions of a public insurance plan as a way to expand health care coverage. The approaches are described in a set of health care reform policy options released by the committee May 11.
Also on the table is the option of not creating a public health insurance plan, but instead expanding coverage through a "reformed and better regulated" private market. That alternative is strongly supported by the pharma industry, insurers and other private industry stakeholders. Read the story here…
Senate Finance Committee leaders emerged May 14 from an eight-hour "walk through" of options for expanding health care coverage without a consensus on the most contentious issue under discussion – whether to establish a government-sponsored insurance plan. Ongoing disagreement over the public plan among Republicans and Democrats raises questions about whether the committee can meet its goal of having a bill ready for markup in June. The issue is being watched closely as one that could derail serious progress on health reform legislation. The committee addressed three possible versions of a public plan, which are outlined in an "options" paper on expanding health care coverage. Read the story here…
Lilly CEO John Lechleiter is urging policy makers to focus on the "I word" – Innovation – in the context of the health care reform debate. In an editorial published in the Wall Street Journal May 14 and then an address to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington later that day, Lechleiter declared his concern that health care reform is not focusing enough on innovation. Read the story here…
Proposals to pay for an expansion of health care coverage that would directly affect pharmaceuticals took a backseat to tax-related options during the Senate Finance Committee's May 12 roundtable discussion on financing health care reform. Read the story here…
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., plans to propose patient protections for federal comparative effectiveness research that draw a clear line separating information gathering and coverage decisions. The "pro-patient safeguards," as they're being called, would take the next step after previous Baucus statements that seek to distance comparative effectiveness from insurance coverage decisions, according to Finance Committee staffer Shawn Bishop. Read the story here…
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