‘Real reform' still seen in caregivers' hands
by Joe Carlson
Although the congressional prescription for healthcare reform will mean many changes for hospitals, the "real reform" that will transform how healthcare is delivered to patients still lies with the caregivers, American College of Healthcare Executives Chairman Christopher Van Gorder said.
"We know that once the political smoke clears, real reform will begin," Van Gorder said from the lectern Monday to open the annual weeklong ACHE Congress on Healthcare Leadership in Chicago. "After all these years, no one-and I mean no one-knows how to put healthcare reform into place better than us. ... Our role in healthcare reform is to make it real."
Sunday's 219-212 vote in the U.S. House to approve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act sent scores of ACHE speakers back to their laptop computers to draft new versions of speeches incorporating the very latest information.
"Yes, healthcare reform did pass last night so that you have more to talk about in between sessions at the largest gathering of healthcare executives in the world," ACHE President and CEO Thomas Dolan joked to a packed auditorium so large that it caused political analyst and commentator Stuart Rothenberg to observe that its participants might be seated in two different ZIP codes.
Rothenberg delivered the Parker B. Francis Distinguished Lecture on Monday, just hours after House Democrats passed their version of the healthcare reform law. No Republican voted for the House bill on Sunday, just as happened last December when the GOP uniformly voted against the Senate version of the same bill when it passed there.
Rothenberg, a longtime political handicapper who writes a column for Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and is editor and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report, said the level of partisan divide was evident in the two parties' politically motivated statements after passage of the reform law.
"Let's face it, we're not going to know for many months, many years, how all of this will play out," Rothenberg said. "Right now, Republicans are trying to convince the world that the sky is falling, and Democrats say this is the best thing in the world. Don't believe either of them."
Rothenberg suggested that many Democrats may have supported the reform law-whose lengthy debate period he described as being "like pulling out teeth, without Novocain"-because they had to prove to voters that they didn't spend the past 18 months crafting a bill that couldn't pass. But in the long run, he predicted that the reform law will not change voters' widely held feeling that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Although Democrats heading into their congressional midterm elections this year will emphasize the bill's positives, including those that will force insurers to cover more patients, overall voters seem likely to maintain their broadly negative image of the reform law. And that may be unfortunate for Democrats, as they're unlikely to take up any other significant legislative issues that would require more difficult votes that could further alienate independents before the elections.
"This healthcare bill is certainly the high-water mark of this Congress. Nothing else this significant will happen. The well is poisoned," he said.