Word came out this evening that Senator Mark Warner is leading a group of eleven freshmen Senators who are offering amendments to health care legislation designed, as his spokesperson informed me, to “speed up innovation and expand transparency.”
The package includes better fraud enforcement, regulatory reforms, expansion of tele-health services, more efficient dispersal of innovations, and data systems upgrades.
The central proposal, I believe, is an effort to bring greater transparency to the pricing of health services, moving from a fee for service system to one where prices are related to the quality and outcome of treatment. As Warner told Bill Bartel of The Virginian Pilot, what Travelocity…did to airline fares, we hope to do with health care.”
Warner’s initiative is a good example of the niche he is striving to carve out for himself in the Senate as a business-oriented progressive who is capable of bringing together people from across the aisle to focus on practical answers to pressing policy challenges. There is evidence that Warner is making an impression, in both this area and on financial regulatory matters.
But the political environment has changed dramatically since Warner was elected. And the politics of the business community that has been a major source of his support over the years is very different in 2009 than it was in 2008.
While there are a number of corporate leaders who favor of some version of the Democrats’ heath care reform legislation, there is a far larger sentiment, I believe, that the Democratic proposals are fundamentally misguided and may be leading the nation in the wrong direction.
Moreover, there is a growing concern in the business community that the entirety of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama agenda is moving too far, too quickly, too leftly.
It’s a theme that I’ve personally heard frequently voiced in appearances before Virginia business organizations and corporate boards.
So it will be fascinating to see how the business communty responds to Warner’s initiatives on health care.
Will they applaud his efforts to improve health care legislation by showing how business principles and technological innovation might support progressive policy goals?
Or has this become simply a bottom line issue where Warner’s ultimate decision to vote yes or no on Pelosi-Reid-Obama is all anybody really wants to know?
There is no telling how much of your tax-dollar-paid-for health insurance I have used in the past 10 years seeking a diagnosis to a neurological illness.
under Warner’s notion, would I pay only for the “quality & outcome”? if so, not one medical professional would have gotten one dime from me in the past 10 years.
the business decision on Obamacare is to vote NO. it costs too much. will Warner cave to Reid?
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.
And so it is with Senator Warner’s amendments. No matter how constructive and sensible, they cannot turn a bad reform scheme into one worth voting for.