NYT: Lobbyists Fight Last Big Plans to Cut Health Care Costs

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/health/policy/11cost.html?_r=1&partner=EXCITE&ei=5043

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: October 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — As the health care debate moves to the floor of Congress, most of the serious proposals to fulfill President Obama’s original vow to curb costs have fallen victim to organized interests and parochial politics.

And now the last two initiatives with real bite that are still in contention — a scaled-back “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans and a nonpartisan Medicare budget-cutting commission — are under furious assault.

Most economists’ favorite idea for slowing the growth of health care spending was ending the income tax exemption for employer-paid health insurance to make lower-cost plans more attractive. But that would hurt workers with big benefit plans, and a labor-union lobbying blitz helped kill that idea by the Fourth of July.

Lobbying by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, meanwhile, dimmed the prospects of various proposals to cut into their incomes, including allowing government negotiation of Medicare drug prices and creating a government insurer with the muscle to lower fee payments.

“The lobbyists are winning,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a conservative Tennessee Democrat who teaches health policy.

Total health care costs in the last 20 years have doubled to about 16 percent of the economy, with no signs of tapering. Along with universal coverage, Mr. Obama has made controlling those costs a central pillar of his health care overhaul, calling the current course “unsustainable.” The effort is a pivotal test of his campaign promise to break the stranglehold of special interests.

FULL 2 page story at link.