Panel: Private sector has key role in health-care reform

Any health-care reform legislation that emerges from Congress must rein in costs while preserving private-sector innovation that has made the U.S. a world leader in medicine, a panel of political leaders agreed Wednesday.

Former U.S. Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle and Bill Frist, ex-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Karl Rove, former President George W. Bush’s chief strategist, hashed out an issue likely to dominate congressional debate this summer and fall during a luncheon at the 2009 BIO International Convention in Atlanta.

Republicans Rove and Frist, and Democrats Dean and Daschle, disagreed over the wisdom of giving Americans a government-run option to the current system of private health insurance plans.

Dean portrayed a public insurance option as a “business proposition” that would free American companies of the high costs of paying for their employees’ health insurance, a savings that would make them more competitive with their foreign counterparts.

“Our business community suffers in this country because businesses have to cope with (health-care) costs that are going up three times faster than inflation,” said Dean, also former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

But Frist warned that instead of simply providing another choice, government-run health insurance would siphon away many Americans from employer-provided private plans because companies anxious to avoid insurance bills would dump their workers’ coverage.

Workers would be left with fewer choices instead of more options, he said.

Rove said there wouldn’t be nearly enough improved efficiencies in health-care reform to absorb the additional costs of providing universal coverage. He said the nation already is saddled with a soaring debt, while Medicare and Social Security are going broke.

“Can we lay on top of that $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in health-care reform?” Rove asked. “That’s a lot of money.”

But Daschle said the savings needed to pay for reform would come from cutting the huge administrative overhead that plagues private health plans, putting more emphasis on well care and controlling chronic diseases.

But neither Democrat called for scrapping private health insurance altogether. Dean said relying solely on a public health plan would hurt research and innovation.

By Dave Williams