Concord Coalition Warns That Health Care Reform Efforts Must Improve Nation's Financial...

Concord Coalition Warns That Health Care Reform Efforts Must Improve Nation's
Financial Outlook

WASHINGTON, July 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Concord Coalition today
released the sixth installment of its series on Health Care and Medicare.
Entitled "Looking Beyond the Administration's 10-Year Reserve Fund: Cost
Control Must Do More Than Pay For Expanded Health Insurance Coverage," the new
publication stresses that policymakers must emphasize controlling costs over
the long-term rather than simply paying for an expansion of coverage.

While paying for any reform effort represents an important first step in
avoiding further deterioration of the fiscal outlook, that action alone will
not do the heavy lifting required to remedy the unsustainable track that
health care spending is already on. Rather, tough choices concerning the
underlying structural problems will be required. As stated in the issue
brief:

"Little will happen to contain the nation's health care costs that doesn't
address the ill-managed proliferation of new technology and the propensities
of the fee-for-service insurance structure to promote more services. More
importantly, little substantive will happen until there is an acceptance all
around -- by the public, providers, insurers, and others in the health care
industry -- that sacrifice must be shared...Until the message is given and
understood that all must yield something, it is hard to see how the parties
will coalesce."

"What reform requires most of all, for the nation as a whole, is cost
containment. Paying for expanded or universal health care requires more than
balancing new expenditures with new revenues or other savings, whatever
possible resources are identified and earmarked. It's a commendable track
relative to past efforts to expand health care benefits, which pushed much of
the payment onto future generations. But it still avoids the larger question
of how to manage the nation's spiraling health care spending so that the whole
system doesn't implode some day. Policymakers cannot afford to lose track of
that larger question even as they battle it out over the best way to pay for
health care reform in the next 10 years."

The Concord Coalition's Series on Health Care and Medicare is designed to
illuminate how intertwined the health care challenge is with the nation's
long-term fiscal challenge. As Congress and the President negotiate the
details of health care reform legislation, it is essential that this linkage
is recognized.

To read previous issues in the series, visit:
http://www.concordcoalition.org/medicare/concord-coalition-series-health-care-and-medicare

The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to
balanced federal budgets and generationally responsible fiscal policy. Former
U.S. Senators Warren Rudman (R-NH) and Bob Kerrey (D-NE) serve as Concord's
co-chairs and former Secretary of Commerce Peter Peterson serves as president.

SOURCE The Concord Coalition

Jonathan DeWald of Concord Coalition, +1-703-894-6222,
communications@concordcoalition.org