Text size:

Bleak economy may help spur health care overhaul

LOS ANGELES TIMES; The story was supplemented with reports from The Associated Press and Bloomberg News.

November 30, 2008

WASHINGTON-When Barack Obama becomes president in January, health care reform will join a list of priorities crowded with two wars and an economy mired in one of the worst slowdowns since the Great Depression.

But the bleak environment paradoxically might spur the kind of costly, sweeping overhaul of the nation's health care system that has been elusive for decades, many political strategists, industry leaders and economists say.

Hospitals and physicians are increasingly worried about the escalating burden of newly unemployed workers being thrown onto the rolls of the uninsured.

Liberal advocacy groups see the Treasury Department's $700-billion commitment to banks and other financial institutions bolstering the case for a similar investment to help sick Americans obtain medical care.

Businesses see new urgency in addressing the nation's health care crisis as they struggle to pay costs for medical benefits while sales plummet and profit margins shrivel.

"Health care reform is very much linked to the broader economic issues that the country is facing," said Todd Stottlemyer, president of the National Federation of Independent Business. "Our view is that there is the energy now to make this a top priority."

Fifteen years ago, the federation, which represents about 300,000 small businesses, helped fight the Clinton administration's proposed health care overhaul. Today, it is one of the leading champions of broad-based reform.

"I have never seen an effort like this," said Ron Pollack, who heads Families USA, a nonprofit consumer group promoting a health care overhaul.

As the annual open health care enrollment season begins, focusing American workers on their individual policies, Democrats generally agree on an approach that would allow most Americans to keep their current coverage. They also would create an exchange so people and businesses without coverage could link up with insurers.

Obama proposed such a plan on the campaign trail, and Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) offered his own version recently. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, whom Obama will nominate as secretary of Health and Human Services, is expected to spearhead the administration's health care overhaul efforts.

The insurers' plan is similar to Obama's, except the president-elect hasn't supported making insurance mandatory for everyone.

But despite some movement on the issue, most observers expect conflicts between interest groups and policymakers as the debate heats up on Capitol Hill.

Republican lawmakers are already expressing concerns about proposals that would drive the federal budget deeper into the red. By some estimates, extending coverage to the nation's uninsured could cost more than $100 billion a year.

"We have a huge financial problem in this country," said Joe Antos, a health care scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who called the idea that bold action would save money on health care "completely ludicrous."

However, many business leaders are linking their fortunes to the fate of the health care debate.

John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, warned that failure to resolve the health care crisis would increasingly threaten major employers. "This is coming to a tipping point," he said.

The story was supplemented with reports from The Associated Press and Bloomberg News.

In tough economic times, businesses see new urgency in addressing nation's health care crisis

Republican lawmakers worry about how proposals would affect budget

Despite some movement on the issue, most observers expect conflicts between interest groups and policymakers