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WASHINGTON – White House officials said Wednesday that healthcare IT is key to containing healthcare costs in the future.
In a conference call with reporters, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said healthcare IT adoption is one of the four pillars upon which the Obama Administration is basing its healthcare strategy.
Orszag said healthcare IT should be combined with a budget-neutral healthcare reform bill, the establishment of a Medicare Commission that will continually implement proposals to improve quality, and an excise tax on expensive private healthcare plans.
The Senate healthcare reform bill contains all four, Orszag said.
DeParle said the Senate is expected to begin debating and amending its bill next week, and she is "very pleased with the way the bill is shaping up for cost containment."
Included in that bill are elements of delivery system reform such as funding to research and establish evidence-based care and changing incentives so that providers provide services based on quality over quantity of care.
Budget neutrality must be a part of any healthcare reform bill the White House would sign, Orszag said. The Senate bill is designed to reduce the federal deficit over the next two decades, he said.
According to DeParle, the United States hasn't seen any cost containment in healthcare spending in 12 years, dating back to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
Just focusing on Medicare and cost containment, she said, the Senate bill proposes a 6 percent reduction in spending. "This is a lot," she said, compared to the past few years, which saw the budget boosted by the Medicare prescription drug benefit – which wasn't paid for.
DeParle said she expects the Senate bill, coupled with increased efforts to prevent Medicare fraud, waste and abuse, would create "broader and deeper" cuts to healthcare spending than are currently anticipated.
Orszag said reforms under consideration by Congress could have greater impact than ever before.
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