“We will spend $2.5 trillion on healthcare this year, but most of this system is based on decisions made in the 1940s,” says Sen. Wyden, who was addressing several hundred reporters at the mid-April Association of Health Care Journalists’ national conference in Seattle. “Back then a person stayed on the job for 20 years or more. Today a typical worker will change jobs 11 times by the age of 40.”
Pres. Barack Obama announced plans to sign a bipartisan healthcare reform bill by the end of 2009.
Sen. Wyden doesn’t expect Congress to pass or President Obama to adopt every component of his Healthy Americans Act, as long as they incorporate most of the key principles of the health reform plan that has received the Republican and Democratic support of 14 senators to date. The Wyden plan is co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah.
Insurance coverage should be portable, Mr. Wyden says. There should be no cherry-picking of patients or discriminating based on pre-existing conditions. He says everyone should be covered, but everyone should pay into the system as well. Mr. Wyden says his plan proposes incentives for prevention, disease management and wellness and changes in the tax law. Eliminating $200 billion in annual employers tax write offs for providing health insurance would free up money to subsidize care for low income Americans, he says.
Under Wyden’s plan, the federal government would continue to cover poor Americans.
Unlike the Clinton health plan of the early ’90s, the Healthy Americans Act would offer universal healthcare coverage from multiple insurers, not through a single payer plan.
He recognizes there’s a tough slog ahead.
“The Left doesn’t want all those private players and the Right doesn’t think government should be involved in healthcare,” Mr. Wyden laughs. “We would be creating markets, but sensible markets.”
He says changes in the tax code would help fund the reform package, along with administrative savings that the Lewin Group estimated could save $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
“We will make care better and more effective,” says the senator, who explains that the bill will provide guaranteed, universal, affordable, high quality private healthcare coverage as good as members of Congress receive.
Sen. Wyden hopes to have a mark up bill by June 1. “And I hope that at the end of this year Pres. Obama will have a signing ceremony,” he says.
