Balancing Budget Requires Focus on Health Care Costs, Says President

WASHINGTON—Ever-growing health care costs are a major
player in the country’s current economic crisis, President
Barack Obama told a prime-time television audience Tuesday night,
and the task of balancing budgets will be impossible if the cost of
health care can’t be contained.

“The biggest driver of long-term deficits are the huge
health care costs that we’ve got out here that we’re
going to have to tackle,” Obama said during his address that
largely focused on the nation’s 2010 budget with a detour of
sorts to discuss the multi-million-dollar bonuses the embattled
behemoth insurance company, AIG, is paying out.

Obama said the details of the final budget will likely change
from the one he has submitted. “We never expected, when we
printed out our budget, that they would simply Xerox it and vote on
it. We assume that it has to go through the legislative
process,” he said.

However, he added, “The bottom line is, is that I want to
see health care, energy, education and serious efforts to reduce
our budget deficit.”

The speech followed congressional lawmakers’ Tuesday
meetings with Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius-D, President Obama’s
nominee for Department of Health and Human Services secretary, and
Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office for Health
Reform.

According to CQ Today,
the main topic of discussion was health care overhaul, and Sebelius
said she met with nearly 40 senators who expressed “a lot of
interest in health reform.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has reportedly told
Democrats that her feelings match President Obama’s regarding
the budget resolution, saying that it is an important “first
step” in health care reform. Peter Orszag, White House Office
of Management and Budget director, said upcoming House and Senate
budget resolutions, which establish various budget totals and
divide spending totals into functional categories including
health care, were scheduled to premiere today with floor
action expected in both chambers next week.

It’s not likely to be smooth sailing for any health reform
resolutions. The Washington Post reported in its Wednesday edition
that Senate Budget Committee Chair, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said
his budget resolution would not include new spending for Obama’s
proposed expansion of health care coverage.

However, other senators, including Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and
Henry Waxman, D-Calif., are optimistic about the outlook of health
care reform and offering solutions. Kennedy, chair of the Senate
Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, stated on
Tuesday that in order to “guarantee that all Americans have access
to quality medical services, we clearly must reform the current
health insurance market,” and pointed to the Massachusetts health
insurance law as an example of “sensible reform.”

And at a House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing
on Tuesday, Committee Chair Waxman said that in addition to
universal coverage, an overhaul of the U.S. health care system must
ensure there are enough primary care physicians and nurses to
provide care. Witnesses at the hearing offered a wide range of
solutions for improving access, including dramatically increasing
the number of primary care physicians and enhancing Medicaid to
address racial, ethnic and geographic disparities in access to
care.