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Health Care reform in limbo: Where are the pressure points?

February 13, 2006 By Charley on the MTA

If you can stand a little technical detail about how the Federal

Government, through Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt,

has started traipsing through our <a

href=”http://bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1425″>delicate

health care negotiations with oversized galoshes, do see <a

href=”http://www.hcfama.org/blog/2006/02/guide-for-perplexed-federal-waiver.html”>John

McDonough’s post at the Healthy Blog. After giving all the detail,

John asks, “Now the question is: do we knuckle under to blatant,

ideologically-driven, federal interference in a state prerogative or —

do we stand up for the right of our Commonwealth to determine our own

health system?”

Well, with time winding down on this thing pretty quickly, the question

for us is this: How and where should public pressure be applied? In

other words, pro-reform folks need to find out: A. “Ears”: Who’s

listening? And B. “Power”: can they do anything about it? First

I’ll break down the players, and then we’ll discuss whether they’re

listening to calls for reform, and whether they have the power to do

anything about it.

The players are:

  1. Our state legislators (especially the conferees, but certainly

    your local Senator and Rep as well)
  2. Senate President Travaglini and Speaker of the MA House DiMasi
  3. Gov. Romney
  4. HHS Secretary Leavitt (i.e. the Bush Administration)
  5. National legislators, especially Sens. Kennedy and Kerry

So let’s see how this works:

  • As for the state legislators, they definitely have more ears

    than power at this point, but they’ve got both. Letters and

    phone calls (617-722-2000) will certainly have a positive effect on the

    final outcome, regardless of what is accomplished or when. They can put

    pressure on leaders and conferees as well to expand MassHealth, or find

    a state-based workaround.
  • DiMasi and Travaglini: More power than ears.

    According to the State House News article quote by McDonough, they both

    sound pretty dug in at this point, Trav against expansion of Medicaid,

    DiMasi for. The <a

    href=”http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2006/02/09/health_compromise_now”>Globe

    editorial page has asked for a compromise on this that seems pretty

    meager to me.
  • Gov. Romney: Well… Leavitt seems to have Romney’s back on this

    one, but does Mitt want to leave MA without what should be his

    signature accomplishment? Does he not care at all? What a waste of

    effort, if he’s not actually serious about getting something passed. Power

    … and maybe bigger ears than we imagine. (Especially if he

    gets a haircut.)
  • Leavitt: Well, he claims to have power of review, and

    he’s in the Bush administration, which is famously deaf. Or is

    it? The Globe’s front page story Sunday says “GOP fears backlash on

    Bush budget
    “. Is that our cue? And perhaps…
  • Kennedy and Kerry might help out with this one, especially TK?

    After all, Teddy helped negotiate the deadline of July 1 for the

    Massachusetts Medicaid waiver with HHS to begin with. Now, obviously

    the Dems are in the minority, but:
    1. Leavitt’s hostility to MA’s Medicaid expansion clearly has a

      lot to do with BushCo’s desire to cut (hell, dismantle) Medicaid,

    2. that hostility is provoking bipartisan outrage,
    3. Kennedy’s been around the block, and likely knows some ways to

      apply pressure to executive branch agencies. In fact, I would guess

      that he’s already got something in the works.

So, I would guess that our Senators have ears and

probably more power than we realize.

Phone calls, faxes, and letters certainly can’t hurt to any of these

folks, but it might be worthwhile to ask your state legislators and US

Senators what’s going on; and maybe even Our Gov might be willing to

cut a deal if he hears enough noise. We’ll see.

Please share widely!
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Filed Under: User Tagged With: congress, dimasi, health-care, kennedy, kerry, leavitt, massachusetts, romney, senate, travaglini

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