Consumer Driven Health Care (CDHC) Reform vs. Policy Reform
Grace Marie Turner rose to policy prominence in Washington, D.C., as part of Senator Bob Bennett's (R-UT) staff to play a relevant role in health reform. Bob's father was in the Senate and he has always been a rote, reasonable conservative from the state of Intermountain Health Systems. Bob had no committee authority on the subject, so Bob Dole appointed him to bring GOP Senate’s left and right together. After Clinton reform failed, he carved out a place no one wanted on privacy policy and suffered the fate designed for anyone who ventures into this area. So he asked Grace Marie to head up a group of eight center-right health policy tanks to evolve principle policy reform.
Out of that effort came Consumer Driven Health Care (CDHC), which latched onto the new Bush Administration economic ideology and brought us the revival of the Medical Savings Account and the Golden Rule Insurance Company (since acquired by UnitedHealthcare for $850 million) consumer choice of individual high deductible insurance. By 2001, the GOP had driven most all of its centrist members out of the Senate and the House and with them much of their health policy leadership on authorizing committees. Only Bill Thomas was left at Ways and Means and he was co-opted by other issues and his persona and the resurrection of Newt Gingrich with his medical industry-funded health care transformation.
About this time in 2003, the GOP White House and congressional majorities working on Medicare Modernization decided to turn Medicare prescription drugs, AARP, and the seniors voting bloc into a reelection asset for 2004. But they needed a way to keep real conservatives on board a "modernization" bill that would spend one trillion dollars over ten years without raising taxes on anyone but the rich Medicare eligibles. Sound familiar? They found it in converting MSA to Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and brought Gingrich in to the House caucus to sell anti-spending conservatives on CDHC. With the help of a couple conservative Democrats (all of whom are still around), they succeeded.
Most of the Bush White House proponents of CDHC/HSA have gone off to sell a variety of their policy off-spring - either insurance or related CDHC products. Grace Marie has remained the rock of principle for conservative consumers. She is articulate and reasonable and has morphed from "skin in the game" insurance products as health care reform vehicles to add support for any consumer information that hasn't been generated by a government or quasi-government agency (that's anti-free market).
More than anyone, Grace Marie has made the "reasonable case" for opposition to "government-run" health care and in her August 21, 2009, editorial she believes that she and the GOP/conservative/CDHC industry approach is winning the current policy battle. Now, I don't agree with a lot she advocates, but she is a reasoned advocate without the intemperate approach of current congressional reform opponents.
She is also wrong on the "turning of the tide." You know the joke about "I don't belong to any organized party; I'm a Democrat?" Well, believe it or not, Democrats in Congress and the White House will find policy consensus on a major reform bill and Republicans, single payer insurance advocates, and CDHC insurance advocates will have to learn to live with it.
We'll have the Republicans to thank for it because their nearly unanimous opposition to Obama will force the old-line Democrats to listen to and find consensus policy with the new and more conservative Democrats. If these people are anything like Congressman Tim Walz (D-1st MN), there will be a bill the president can sign, people in Minnesota can learn to like, and the political result will be that President Obama looks like a leader and the Republicans look, for the third straight election, like they enjoy ignoring the problems of health care access and affordability.