Expect more noise and contention on healthcare up on Capitol Hill now that the November elections are over, experts say.
At a Friday press briefing hosted by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), experts said healthcare will remain a key issue for state and federal lawmakers following midterm elections.
According to Jennifer Haberkorn, a healthcare policy and politics reporter with POLITICO and a speaker at the briefing, House Republicans picked up 60 seats in the Nov. 2 election, with the results of several races still outstanding. Many of the few moderate House Democrats who survived Tuesday night opposed the healthcare reform law.
On the state level, Republicans picked up at least 10 governor's seats and hundreds of state legislature seats that could drive state-level opposition to the health reform law down the road, according to Haberkorn.
The new GOP majority in the House, however, doesn't mean a repeal of healthcare reform is likely, she said. A full repeal in the House is likely, but it will die in the Senate, where Democrats still hold the majority. President Barack Obama won't sign a bill repealing healthcare reform, even if it should get approved in both houses.
"Plan B would be to repeal pieces of the law. A lot of pieces are up for grabs, but it's unclear what pieces will be up for grabs," Haberkorn said. "The GOP will throw everything against the wall and see what sticks."
There are many paths the GOP could take, according to Haberkorn, involving oversight, defunding and legislation. For oversight, the GOP could uncover what happened on the Hill during the debate of healthcare reform. They could also try to defund the law, but there is a relatively small amount of funding that could be subject to defunding by Congress. In addition, the GOP could find the provisions that are most susceptible to repeal and force President Obama to use his veto pen.
Heathcare IT money is unlikely to be touched, Haberkorn said. "It's not on the radar."
"The attitude on the Hill is that health IT funding is creating jobs," she said.
Tim Storey, senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislators, said Republicans surged forward in state control as a result of this election. They now control more than 53 percent of legislative seats and this election resulted in the highest number of new governors in history.
"If Americans wanted change, they got change at the state level," Storey said. "It really was an historic night for the GOP."
Fiscal conservatism is going to rule the day for the next couple of years, Storey said. State lawmakers will have some tough decisions to make with nationwide state budget shortfalls.
Kathleen Nolan, director of the health division at the National Governors Association, said the turnover of 29 governor seats in this election will have policy implications for healthcare, but it's too early to tell how that will play out.
When new governors come in, they bring in a whole new team, including insurance commissioners and Medicaid directors. Until these people get set up in their positions, this will leave a lot of questions on predicting how it will affect state healthcare policy, Nolan said.
Nolan agreed that budget issues would dominate the landscape for states.