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WASHINGTON – In a letter sent Tuesday to Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.), President Barack Obama reiterated his commitment to promoting the use of information technology as a means of reducing healthcare costs.
Obama said the White House is also determined to go after "the key drivers of skyrocketing healthcare costs, including unmanaged chronic diseases, duplicated tests and unnecessary hospital readmissions."
Obama sent the letter to Baucus, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, and Kennedy – both chief architects of a healthcare reform bill – following a meeting in which Obama urged Senate Democrats to move quickly on reform.
Kennedy and Baucus plan to introduce major heathcare bills over the coming weeks, as do senior House Democrats.
"We simply cannot afford to postpone health care reform any longer," Obama said in his letter. "This recognition has led an unprecedented coalition to emerge on behalf of reform – hospitals, physicians and health insurers, labor and business, Democrats and Republicans. These groups, adversaries in past efforts, are now standing as partners on the same side of this debate."
He urged Kennedy and Baucus to attack the root causes of inflation in healthcare.
"That means promoting the best practices, not simply the most expensive," Obama said. "We should ask why places like the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and other institutions can offer the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm. We need to learn from their successes and replicate those best practices across our country."
In a May 28 article in the Boston Globe, Kennedy wrote: "As experience has shown, it's better – and cheaper – to get it right the first time rather than have patients go in and out of the hospital. So we'll start paying for the overall quality of care, not the quantity of procedures. We'll make certain that doctors and patients will have better information so they can decide which treatment is best based on real evidence."
In his letter, Obama also affirmed his intent to offer a government healthcare plan.
"I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans," he wrote.
