The future of healthcare reform appears at best uncertain. But recent interviews with President Obama and leaders of Congress seem to indicate that perhaps we can get a scaled down version of reform passed sometime this year.
In a recent interview with ABC News, as reported by CNN, the president said this:
He “would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on. We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people. We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up.”
Several Democrats indicate that other less controversial provisions that Congress may be able to pass include:
- Barring discrimination by insurers based on pre-existing conditions
- Closing the Medicare “doughnut hole” to bring down prescription drug costs
In a recent interview, White House strategist David Axelrod said “there are great concerns about the health insurance system and the kind of power that the insurance people have over people to deny care, to raise rates and so on.” Obama is “not going to walk away from that,” Axelrod said.
What do you think should happen now? Can the president and Congress get this done?
This post first appeared at Action for Better Healthcare.