Two reports recently released by the Congressional Budget Office, Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals, and Budget Options, Volume 1: Health Care, have dominated discussions this week.

Jane Zhang of the WSJ reported:

The Congressional Budget Office analyzed 115 options to change health care, some costly and others that would save the government and consumers some money.
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Among the findings:

- If no changes occur, CBO says health care spending will rise to 25% of GDP by 2025 from 16% last year.

- If the federal government required all employers with more than 50 workers to provide insurance or pay a penalty, federal revenue would increase by $13 billion in four years and $47 billion over nine years.

- Allowing non-federal workers and companies to buy into the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program would cost the federal government about $2 billion over four years and $6.2 billion over nine years.

Ezra Klein explained the importance of these reports and the impact they could have on healthcare reform plans:

How do we decide how much a government program costs? It’s an essential question. Programs need prices, because the government has to produce a budget. But pricing legislation in advance is impossible… But you still need a number. So Washington operates amidst a tacitly agreed-upon imprecision. What the CBO says, goes. “In this town,” says Henry Aaron, a senior economics fellow at the Brookings Institution, “it’s not infrequent to hear people say it doesn’t make any difference what it really costs. It only matters what CBO says it costs.”

The books that the CBO released this week are essentially a guide to the CBO’s scoring process. They tell congressmen, in advance, how the Number will be built. The Wonk Room and The New York Times are focusing on the equations. But they’re not what’s changed. Rather, the difference is that Congress knows what they’ll be in advance. The scoring process will still be a minefield, but now legislators will have a map. There won’t be a situation analogous to 1994, when the White House was shocked by an unwelcome assumption and their legislation was mortally wounded by a staggering price point. Obama and his allies in Congress, along with Orszag’s help, will be able to build a bill able to survive the scoring process. They can, effectively, decide their own Number.

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The holidays are upon us, and we all know what that means for health issues — besides higher sugar and alcohol intake. That’s right, healthcare reform house parties! Check out the message from HHS Secretary nominee Tom Daschle below, and learn more about hosting or attending a healthcare community discussion over the holidays.

Meanwhile, four issues dominating discussions around the web this week are the future of the FDA, the new Nursing Home Compare rating system and web site, physicians and health IT, and of course, healthcare reform issues.

At the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest DrugWonks blog, Peter Pitts shared his recommendations for reforming the Food and Drug Administration:

I was honored when the Obama FDA transition team called and asked for my advice on how the incoming administration could make the agency a more robust and forward-looking regulatory instrument.
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My suggested areas of focus are

1. A strong, science-based FDA
2. The Reagan/Udall Foundation — a Partnership of Unequals
3. Clarity vs. Ambiguity
4. Information Management
5. Food Safety and Security
6. Risk Communications
7. The Drug Label and the “Safe Use” of Drugs

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There are, obviously, many, many other important issues … and I look forward to working with the transition team to ensure that the new commissioner can hit the ground running… And kudos to the Obama transition team for reaching out to a wide variety of groups.

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It’s official: President-elect Obama announced in Chicago last week he will be nominating former Senator Tom Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services — and as director of the White House Office of Health Reform. The President-elect also announced his pick of Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Jeanne Lambrew as Daschle’s deputy director. (Official announcements from the transition team: the press release with the President-elect’s prepared remarks, and the blog post, with photos from the event.)

At the National Journal Lost In Transition blog, Mary Gilbert explained:

Daschle, in his new dual role, will be responsible not only for crafting a health care plan but also for implementing it. Calling him “one of America’s foremost health care experts,” Obama claimed that Daschle’s knowledge of health care policy and extensive legislative experience make him uniquely suited to steer an effective reform package through Congress. As “the original no-drama guy,” Obama said, Daschle is also someone who can be trusted to use the HHS Department to implement the new policy on the ground.
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Pressed by a reporter on how he plans to pay for an overhaul of the health care system, Obama spoke about first cutting costs and then finding ways to make the system pay for itself over the long run, though he was short on specifics. He stressed, however, that fixing health care must be “intimately woven” into his team’s overall economic recovery plan. “We can’t put this off because we’re in an emergency,” he said. “This is part of the emergency.”

From Sarah Rubenstein on the WSJ Health Blog:

For his part, Daschle, who will also head up a new White House office dedicated to health reform, emphasized that this won’t happen behind close doors. (See our post from earlier today.) “We’re going to bring the American people into this conversation and make health-care reform an open and inclusive process that goes from the grassroots up.”

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The Obama-Biden Transition Team website has been generating a great deal of discussion for its innovative approaches and potential effects (or lack thereof) on key aspects of federal government policymaking. The recent Join the Discussion: Healthcare feature on the Change.gov blog stimulated a 3,701-comment-conversation about important health care issues.

But wait! There’s more!

The video response from former Senator (and head of the Obama healthcare transition team, at least until his HHS nomination is announced) Tom Daschle and Laura Arnonson (Obama healthcare policy team member) regarding the healthcare discussion generated over 4,400 comments since Tuesday afternoon — and counting!

Open, extensive conversations about healthcare issues and policy ideas are obviously very near and dear to our heart here at Disruptive Women. But what impact, if any, do you think the Change.gov approach will have on healthcare reform? What are your reactions to Daschle and Aronson’s video response to the blog comment discussion?

Here’s the video from Daschle and Aronson:

Over on his Washington Monthly Political Animal blog, Steve Benen noted the historical significance of the Change.gov blog, even though “the idea of setting up a website and accepting public comments doesn’t sound especially revolutionary” at first glance:

Historically, government-related sites have avoided public comments. The medium was about one-way communication, not two. To this extent, we’re already seeing the beginnings of a significant shift. George W. Bush ran an operation that stifled dissent and kept opposing viewpoints as far away from policy makers as possible.

On the ZDNet Healthcare blog, Dana Blankenhorn considered how the President-Elect’s effort “to drive the health care debate, from the bottom up” might affect the health care reform process, especially considering “how policy debates typically play out”:

Interest groups lay down markers, then go into small meetings and hash something out, which goes to Congress in order to die. The question is whether the Internet will be allowed to break through this.
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The question is whether ordinary citizens who are not inclined to support the new Administration will participate, or whether they will rely on top-down organizations to oppose it.

On Covering Health, Ed Silverman reacted to the blog discussion and video response from Daschle and Arnonson, which, he explained, reviewed “a couple of key issues and the overall response to their effort”:

To be candid, there wasn’t much said that we don’t already know. Daschle, at various turns, says things such as, “We need to really put the emphasis on prevention” and later, “We need to contain costs.” To be fair, the willingness to engage the public in this way is worth noting. After all, when was the last time that HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt deliberately spoke to Americans by way of YouTube? Send us a clip if you have one. Meanwhile, Daschle promises more online discussions are forthcoming. (more…)

Please note: This week’s roundup is abbreviated due to the holiday.

There has been a great deal of buzz over President-Elect Obama’s choice of Melody Barnes for Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, as ThinkProgress reported Monday. (You can also check out the official Obama-Biden Transition Team blog post.) Before taking an advisory role on Obama’s transition team and campaign, Barnes held the position of Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress. Also, from 1995 to 2003, Barnes served as chief counsel to Senator Ted Kennedy. Many have suggested that Barnes’ primary focus in the new Administration will be on health care policy, given her record on health care issues and the President-Elect’s stated domestic agenda priorities. Noting Barnes’ record at CAP, Ezra Klein wrote:

Barnes has been one of the chief architects of CAP’s domestic policy program, and in that, she’s created a formidable and decidedly impressive organization.

At The Field, Al Giordano commented on Barnes’ record as an “unabashed progressive,” and on what her role in the Obama Administration will include:

Barnes will coordinate the mega-board of the Cabinet secretaries of Health and Human Services, Justice, Labor, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Energy, Treasury, Agriculture, Transportation, Interior and Veterans Affairs. Basically, she’ll be domestic policy czar.
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1993. Want to get an idea of how progressive she is? Read this: In January of 2007, prior to President Bush’s state of the union address, Barnes wrote this essay for the Washington Post, What a Progressive President Might Say…

(Read Barnes’ essay here.)

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Health Care America Now started running a new ad in an “attempt to influence the political commuity to help push the president-elect’s vision of health care reform once he takes office,” as Sam Stein reported for the Huffington Post:

Health Care for America Now is out with a new advertisement Tuesday morning that makes clear that Obama will be held to the health care reform promises he made while on the campaign trail.

The spot, airing in Washington D.C., uses an October speech by Obama on health care as a way to set the ground rules for his forthcoming administration.

Here is the new Health Care for America Now ad:

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