White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats should “let the dust settle” before making any decisions. Senior Senate Democrats such as Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.) urged lawmakers to take “a couple days to cool off.” And House Democrats such as Robert Andrews (N.J.), who chairs a health care subcommittee, predicted his leaders would decide on a strategy by the end of next week even as he said any new movement on legislation would “take awhile.”
“We have to know what our possibilities are and that means in both houses and with the White House,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
As noted in my last blog legislators should apply a standard problem solving process to actually determine what the nation needs in the way of health care reform. The fact is there is a trillion dollars of waste in the present health care delivery system. We know we could take out 30% of the cost of the existing system over the next 10 years if we can focus Medicare on getting the payment system right(see my Medicare payment flaws paper and if we can help hospital and health system CEOs focus on removing the waste in health care delivery.(see my paper in "Health Affairs" from September 2009 posted on our home page).
We also have created The Healthcare Value Leaders Network, the mission of which is to facilitate rapid and dramatic improvement in the performance of health systems. A number of these organizations will be gathering each summer to share and learn from each other, we invite you to attend.
We do have an historic opportunity to change American health care let's make sure we get it right!
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