CHT Member Meeting 2006 Election: Implications for Health and Healthcare
| Date: November 15, 2006 | Location: Washington, DC |
On November 15 at the Madison Hotel in downtown Washington, DC, the Center for Health Transformation hosted our final member meeting of 2006.
Sadly, our member meeting was conducted in the marked absence of one of the most active partners in our work to save lives and save money in America, Dr. Robert A. Lipson. Dr. Lipson, President and CEO of the WellStar Health System in Georgia, passed away earlier this month following a tragic motorcycle accident.
The entire CHT community joins with friends, family and colleagues in mourning the loss of Dr. Lipson, a sincerely compassionate, generous and visionary individual.
"Rob Lipson was a dear friend and visionary leader who will be greatly missed," said Newt Gingrich. "He touched the lives and dramatically improved the health of countless people, not only within the WellStar system, but throughout the state and the nation. I am deeply saddened by his tragic death, both on a personal level, as I have lost a great friend and valued mentor, and on a broader level, as our community, our state and our country have lost a great leader. My heart goes out to his family, to the WellStar community and to all those whose lives, like mine, were blessed and brightened by having known him."
The Center for Health Transformation team is profoundly saddened by the passing of Dr. Lipson. We will continue to work tirelessly to meet 21st century challenges with 21st century solutions in the memory of Robert Lipson, an irreplaceable leader in the fight to transform health.
Brief Synopsis
The theme for our November member meeting was a discussion of the implications of the 2006 elections on health and healthcare. We are grateful to all of our members who joined us for the day's series of compelling and insightful interpretations of what the 2006 elections will mean to our collaborative effort to create of a 21st century intelligent health system. From what the feedback we have received thus far, the highlight of the day was the Center's special closed-door, member-only session featuring election analysis from famed political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin, "All's Fair: Love, War and Politics."
We hope that the day's program, including remarks from the day's speakers - CHT founder Newt Gingrich, CHT CEO and President Nancy Desmond, pollster David Winston, and Congressional senior staffers Chuck Clapton and Michael Zamore (respectively, Assistant for Health Policy to Speaker Dennis Hastert and Policy Advisor to Congressman Patrick Kennedy) – helped to contextualize the election results in light of our work to transform health and healthcare in America.
Clearly, as Democrats prepare to take control of the House and Senate for the first time in a dozen years, the landscape for potential reforms to the health system looks remarkably different than it did in a Republican-controlled Congress. Several of our speakers pointed out that there are several measures that could potentially garner bipartisan support in the next session. For example, Speaker Gingrich pointed to potential agreement on a bio-security measure. (One partisan issue highly likely to come up in a Democrat-controlled Congress is that of direct negotiation over Medicare prices, a process that has certainly not helped to bring down prices in other nations' state-run systems, but still appeals to liberals as a talking-point heavy agenda item.)
A Democrat-controlled Congress is considered by conventional wisdom to be unlikely to advance the consumer- and business-friendly models of transformation, such as a concerted effort to accelerate health IT adoption. As such, CHT Founder Newt Gingrich noted that those interested in advancing the underlying momentum for health IT investment should direct resources toward helping advance HIT independent of the Congress, instead looking to the White House and HHS under the leadership of Secretary Mike Leavitt.
Speaker Gingrich expressed confidence at the meeting that legislation on health price and quality transparency would pass in the 110th Congress. Citing CHT's mission to inject consumer-driven principles into the health system, Gingrich asserted that while the Pelosi-Reid Congress may seem resistant to progress on this front, the entire Democratic caucus of legislators (particularly the ?blue dog' conservative Democrats comprising the majority of newly-elected freshmen) will not be able to deny the growing reality that the value of the market outstrips that of the bureaucracy.
At the end of the day, the broad consensus of the member meeting was that the results of the midterm elections will dictate the future of health transformation only so much as we allow it to. Particularly considering the crushing impact of health spending on the federal budget and the recent successes of states in applying consumer-driven solutions to state Medicaid programs, Americans will increasingly demand value in the healthcare system – a return on their uniquely personal investment. The bottom line is that markets deliver more goods of higher quality at lower cost to more consumers. Transformation of the health system is inevitable ? we just have to direct its course.
