The New Health Dialogue

Julie Andrews may have made "The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music," famous, but it looks like our nation may be singing another song before too long because another hill—Capitol Hill—is alive with the sound of health reform.

Yesterday, in the midst of Senator Ted Kennedy's return to the Senate and bipartisan talks about a legislative strategy to fix our health care system, Senator Max Baucus and his colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee gathered to explore the economic aspects of our health care crisis.

The overwhelming message coming from the Committee was clear: fixing our health care crisis is an economic issue.

Finance Committee Chair, Senator Baucus, invoked LBJ's "walk and chew gum at the same time" phrase, and said:

We are clearly facing a significant recession. That economic challenge commands a significant investment of government resources. Some say that we will have to choose between fixing the economy and enacting comprehensive health reform. I reject that false choice. I say, we can and should do both. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. Not only can we, but we have to.

Going on to quote New America's Cost of Doing Nothing report, Baucus said,

A recently-released report from the New America Foundation states it well. It says: ‘We must reform our struggling health system not in spite of our economic crisis, but rather because of the impact health care has on the American economy. The economic and social impact of inaction is high and it will only rise over time.

Republican Ranking Member, Senator Chuck Grassley, followed up on Senator Baucus' remarks:

We must acknowledge the problem that spiraling increases in health care spending create for our economy...Rising health care costs affect jobs when employers struggle to cope with the cost of providing health coverage to workers and those costs affect our competitiveness internationally.

SEIU President and witness, Andy Stern, went on to link our health care crisis to the recent meltdown of our financial markets:

When it comes to the health care crisis, we have to take a lesson from the economic crisis: the longer we wait, and the less we do, the worse it gets.

Health reform cynics beware—with the growing momentum for action in the air, fixing our health care system may soon become one of Congress' "favorite things."