Aug
3
Written by:
Elizabeth Roberts
8/3/2009 12:00 PM
Last week I chaired a panel on health care reform at the National Lieutenant Governors Association conference that featured Howard Dean, former DNC chair and governor of Vermont, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a Congressional Budget Office director and economic advisor to former President Bush.
As you might expect given their backgrounds, Dean and Holtz-Eakin had differing opinions on what national health care reform should look like.
Howard Dean passionately advocated for the Obama plan and making sure a public option is available; Holtz-Eakin does not believe a public option is the right way to go. Dean feels that expanding coverage needs to happen as a first step of reform; Holtz-Eakin thinks expanded coverage won’t matter if we don’t deal with cost controls first.
What encouraged me, however, was how much common ground existed between the two. They had different political perspectives, yes, but both agreed lawmakers need to put partisan politics aside and focus on what country needs.
Both believe health care reform is urgent. Something needs to happen now—the status quo cannot be maintained.
They agreed that having an exchange or marketplace for purchasing insurance directly from insurers is important—similar in concept to the HealthHub RI planning project commissioned by my office. (Read more about HealthHub RI here.)
Late Friday night, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce approved legislation that formed consensus on some of the same points as Dean and Holtz-Eakin had agreed upon. Other lawmakers should take a page from the civil, reasoned discourse heard on this NLGA panel and the action taken by the Energy and Commerce committee to find common ground on national health care reform.
The need is urgent, and the time is now.
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