Team Kennedy Aligns Congress, Health Lobbyists Behind Overhaul

By Aliza Marcus

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Senator Edward M. Kennedy, battling a deadly brain tumor, is pushing ahead on a plan to overhaul the U.S. health-care system, ordering meetings with interest groups and negotiating with colleagues to ready a proposal that Barack Obama can act on after taking office.

Kennedy, 76, had surgery for his cancer in June, and has since been treated with chemotherapy and radiation. While the type of tumor Kennedy has can sometimes be fatal within 18 months, the Massachusetts Democratic and his staff are pushing ahead in their efforts to secure approval of an idea championed by Kennedy for 46 years: medical insurance for all Americans.

“This has been the cause of Kennedy’s life, and it’s clear he sees this as a great opportunity,” said Adam Clymer, the author of a Kennedy biography, in a telephone interview. “There’s a president who wants it and, at this stage, there’s a lot less hostility from the industry” than in the past.

The goal is to avoid the fate of the failed health-care program pushed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1993, according to a Kennedy aide who requested his name not be used as a condition of the interview. To do this, the staff, who called themselves “Team Kennedy,” has held twice-weekly sessions since October with business, consumer, insurance and hospital groups, he said.

Obama, endorsed by Kennedy for president, has said he’ll support subsidies, government health programs and new insurance plans to get everyone covered. And Kennedy has an ally in Thomas Daschle, Obama’s pick to direct White House efforts on health- care change. Daschle led Senate Democrats for 10 years, and helped usher through Kennedy’s 1997 legislation making health care available to more children.

Public Sentiment

Public sentiment for change is also growing, according to recent polls. Sixty-two percent of registered voters said in an October survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-policy research group in Menlo Park, California, that the economic crisis has made health-care change more important.

The byword for the Team Kennedy effort is “consensus,” according to the aide. Kennedy’s staff has held twice-weekly sessions since October with business, consumer, insurance and hospital groups. The goal is a program that trims costs while extending coverage to 46 million uninsured Americans.

Last week, Democratic and Republican staff members on Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, as it is known formally, began meeting with colleagues from the Finance Committee to work on proposals, the Kennedy aide said.

While details of what’s being negotiated haven’t surfaced, the presence of John McDonough, a former Massachusetts state lawmaker hired by Kennedy as an aide in April, suggests an overhaul may incorporate aspects of a Massachusetts health plan passed under Governor Mitt Romney in 2006.

Massachusetts Plan

That plan, pushed by Health Care For All, a Boston-based group headed by McDonough, was designed to guarantee coverage for all state residents. It requires employers to contribute to coverage for their workers, and individuals to obtain coverage or face tax penalties. The government subsidizes insurance for the poor under the program, and private policies must meet a minimum standard of benefits.

The proportion of uninsured people in Massachusetts dropped to 7.9 percent in the year after the plan began from just over 10 percent in 2005, Census data show. Still, the program exceeded early budget projections for fiscal 2008, according to a state report, spurring questions about its cost-effectiveness.

McDonough, in a Dec. 11 interview, said Massachusetts won’t be a “blueprint layered over the U.S.,” though he declined to detail specifics of the negotiations.

The meetings with special-interest health groups are “vitally important” because these organizations need to feel they have a voice in the process, McDonough said, something they said they didn’t have in 1993.

Cost an Issue

The Kennedy staff member said it is clear from the ongoing discussions that new legislation must include steps to keep costs under control.

“For a significant slice of the stakeholder community and many members of Congress, it is really, really important to get a handle on the growing cost of health care,” the aide said.

Whatever the final plan may look like, people involved in forming it say Kennedy is the glue holding together an often- quarrelsome group of special interests.

“An issue is how long you can hold everyone together, and Kennedy plays a major role, given his seniority and his expertise,” said pollster Celinda Lake, president of the Washington-based Lake Research Partners, in a telephone interview. “Honestly, his illness is a factor too. These are holding people together.”

‘Marching Orders’

The senator hasn’t attended the meetings with groups such as America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the National Federation of Independent Business.

Yet, “it is clear he remains very active in terms of giving marching orders to his staff, and in terms of reaching out to his colleagues,” said Ron Pollack, who has joined meetings with Kennedy staff as director of Families USA, a Washington-based health-advocacy group.

On June 2, Kennedy underwent 3½ hours of surgery for his incurable brain tumor, or glioma, at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. That was followed with chemotherapy and radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Although Kennedy doesn’t discuss his illness, it has changed how he does his job.

The senator, saying he wanted to concentrate on health care, gave up a post this month on the Judiciary Committee, where he had championed civil rights, another cause long identified with the Kennedy family. He has also been given a special office close to the Senate floor.

July Vote

In July, in the middle of cancer treatment, Kennedy returned to Congress to vote for legislation that halted a cut in fees paid to doctors by Medicare, the U.S. health-insurance plan for the elderly and disabled.

Amanda Austin participated in meetings with Kennedy’s staff as a health-care lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small companies. She says she has come out of meetings with a positive feeling that the effort by Kennedy and his staff is progressing.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a significant push for consensus,” Austin said. “So far, so good.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Aliza Marcus in Washington at amarcus8@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 22, 2008 15:35 EST

		Email this article Printer friendly format