January 26th, 2010

The Philadelphia Inquirer today published an op-ed by Dr. Stuart Shapiro, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association.

Writes Dr. Shapiro:

“Health-care reform has been one of America’s biggest policy challenges for more than 40 years. The Clinton administration’s attempt to address it in the early 1990s was abandoned after it failed to gain broad support. Without real compromise – really soon – the Obama plan faces a similar fate.

If Ted Kennedy were alive, and if last week’s political tsunami in Massachusetts had happened elsewhere, I can imagine the conversation he might have had with Republicans Orrin Hatch and John McCain in the Senate gym. (As a onetime aide to Kennedy, I speak from experience.) “John, Orrin, we have a mess on our hands with health-care reform,” Kennedy would say. “Let’s see what we can do to fix this for the American people.”

Before they left the gym, they would have agreed that they all wanted to bar insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting illnesses. Hatch and McCain would have added that there must be tort reform, and Kennedy would have said that universal coverage should be a goal. Then they would have returned to their offices and told their staffs, “Let’s fix this.”

Their compromise would look something like this:

Universal health care would be retained as a goal, to be phased in over time as the country can afford it. It would expand with specific cost and care triggers, starting with children and continuing gradually until all groups are covered.

Insurance companies would be required to cover each group triggered, and each group’s members would be legally required to obtain insurance with defined minimum benefits, and subsidies if necessary. This would satisfy lawmakers who want insurance companies to stop denying coverage to people with preexisting illnesses, as well as insurers who want a mandate in exchange for changing their current practices. Kennedy would give up the public option for now, but it could be on the table again if costs are not controlled.”

Read the rest at the Inquirer.