Obama: 'Health Care Reform Will Not Wait Another Year'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, in a near-hour-long address to members of Congress and the American people Tuesday night, pledged health care reform within the year.

"The cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough," he said during a speech that also took point-blank aim at the economic crisis, education and energy. "So let there be no doubt: Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait and it will not wait another year."

Obama said he has already scheduled a summit meeting next week on health care, "bringing together businesses and workers, doctors and health care providers, Democrats and Republicans."

The president is moving ahead even though he is without a Department of Health and Human Services secretary. Obama's pick for the job, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., withdrew as the nominee following admission that he had failed to pay back taxes. Daschle, favored among HME stakeholders because of his knowledge of the industry, was to have been the administration's key player in health care reform.

In his speech, Obama noted the urgency to do something immediately about what he called "the crushing cost of health care."

"This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds,' he said. "By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, one million more Americans have lost their health insurance. It is one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas. And it's one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of our budget."

That last fact was underscored earlier Tuesday by CMS' release of national health care spending, expected to come in at $2.4 trillion for 2008 and increase by 3.5 percent in 2009 to take up 17.6 percent of the gross domestic product.

Already, Obama noted, Congress has expanded the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, to provide health insurance for 11 million American children whose parents work full time. He also plans to invest in electronic health records and new technology to "reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy and save lives."

As well, he said, a new effort will be launched to seek a cure for cancer "in our time." And preventive care will claim a large investment "because that is one of the best ways to keep our people healthy and our costs under control."

In his effort to cut the $11 trillion deficit in half by the end of his first term, Obama vowed, among other things, to "root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn't make our seniors any healthier."

What all this means for the HME industry is yet to be seen.

"Obama's speech did not get into a lot of health reform specifics, and his administration may not drill down to HME issues for some time," said Michael Reinemer, vice president, communications and policy, for the American Association for Homecare. "But his administration's emphasis on pragmatism — finding solutions that work — and accountability are noteworthy.

"Home care faces an imminent threat from restarting the [competitive] bidding program plus threats of further and deeper cuts to oxygen therapy," Reinemer continued. "So we have to continue to underscore our numerous concerns to Congress and the Obama administration and work toward solutions that work."

Reinemer added that AAHomecare's 13-point anti-fraud plan dovetails with Obama's call to eliminate fraud and abuse in Medicare. "That will be one our key messages to policymakers and the media this week," he said.