Friday, May 15, 2009

Is Obama's Health Deal Falling Apart?   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Politico:

The president of the American Hospital Association said Thursday that a deal with the White House to cut the growth in health care spending has been “spun way away from the original intent.”

President Barack Obama described the agreement this week with six major health care organizations as a “watershed event,” hailing what the White House said was their promise to reduce spending by 1.5 percentage points annually for a decade, which he said could save as much as $2 trillion over that span.

But in a conference call Thursday, President Richard Umbdenstock told 230 member organizations that the agreement had been misrepresented. The groups, he said, had agreed to gradually ramp up to the 1.5 percentage-point target over 10 years – not to reduce spending by that much in each of the 10 years, .

“There has been a tremendous amount of confusion and frankly a lot of political spin,” Umbdenstock said on the call. “And I want to assure you that the American Hospital Association is at the table and a responsible part of this, but that we’ve been very clear on what we have committed to.”

05/15 07:41 AMShare