August 12th, 2009
Who might get health reform passed?
This guy. John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable.
But right now he seems awfully ambivalent about it.
The Roundtable is an association of large businesses, most of whom offer health insurance to their employees. Castellani is fond of noting they buy insurance for 35 million employees, family members, and retirees.
This can represent 20% or more of employee compensation, a tax neither international competitors, nor a growing number of smaller competitors, pay.
The group got into this political fight as part of a coalition called Healthy Economy Now, which includes three groups on the “sell” side of healthcare — PHRMA, AdvaMed, and the AMA — as well as three other groups on the
“buy” side — the SEIU union, the AARP, and Families USA.
Since the political fight got tough, however, this tough group has gone quiet. The site’s most recent news story dates from May, describing an ad buy.
Fox News remains suspicious of the Roundtable and its allies, openly asking, then answering the question of why they even care — self-interest.
What seems evident is the coalition’s members are now pursuing their own strategies. The buy-side allies are with the Administration while the sell-side groups have been negotiating for a bill that will give them the maximum benefit for the minimum of regulation.
The Roundtable’s last public statement came last week, a teleconference where President John Castellani emphasized bipartisanship.
Castellani is playing an inside game with the Senate Finance Committee, which has given itself a September 15 deadline to get a bill through a “gang of six” moderates on both sides, led by chair Max Baucus and ranking Republican Charles Grassley.
Failure would probably torpedo hopes of any bill passing, because most provisions in a reform package can’t be defined as “budget reconciliation,” meaning 60 votes are needed to pass a bill in the Senate.
Castellani’s August 6 comments displayed enormous ambivalence about any government role. He doesn’t like a public option competing with the private insurance industry. He doesn’t like any mandate that small businesses competing with his members get insurance.
One thing he might support is a version of a “free rider” clause, which could force businesses that don’t offer coverage to provide subsidies helping any employees who get coverage through a national exchange.
What we know about free rider at this point – and we don’t know everything, it’s not all set in the detail – but we know the direction they’re going and we think it could be worked out to be acceptable for us.
During the teleconference, Castellani also seemed open to some tax on “Cadillac” health plans, those with very high benefit levels, but he would not be specific.
Based on leaks of the Senate Finance Committee discussions, Castellani so far is getting everything he has asked for.
But it’s also clear, reading his tortured answers at the teleconference, that he and his members feel under tremendous pressure from their normal political allies to torpedo any bill that fulfills the Obama Administration’s objective of universal coverage and a government role in keeping insurers honest.
That result would not be in his members’ interest, but if those CEOs believe in reform, and haven’t just been talking about it, they need to let him know. Now.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 08/12/09
