Healthcare reform, not political theater

President Obama has dared the Republicans to come to a bipartisan summit Thursday with their best ideas for healthcare.

While the pundits are already discounting the summit as merely a stage for more political theater, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire has taken Obama’s challenge seriously and put forward a plan of his own. But unfortunately, it appears that Republican leaders won’t be taking Gregg with them to the White House this week.

If any issue merits serious bipartisan debate and solutions, it is the healthcare challenge facing our country. Insurance premiums are growing at four times the rate of wages. Employer healthcare costs are crushing job creation, and healthcare inflation is sending long-term deficits into the stratosphere.

But over the last year, Washington’s debate has not matched the seriousness of the problem. Republicans claimed that Democrats wanted a government takeover of healthcare, while Democrats ridiculed the small-bore incrementalism of Republican alternatives, attempting to tar the GOP as “the party of no.”

Amid this mess, it’s no wonder the American people are skeptical that Congress can do anything worthwhile on healthcare.

To his credit, Obama has called for this bipartisan summit to be a real exchange of ideas among serious people. He has invited the leaders of both parties in Congress, and he put forward his own detailed legislative proposal Monday -- an unprecedented step for an administration that has until now let Congress draft the details of healthcare policy.

The American people deserve just as serious a response from the Republicans, and Gregg’s proposal just might be it.

Because Gregg does not head a committee directly involved in healthcare, he was not invited by the White House to the summit. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is allowed to bring four other senators with him Thursday. Gregg should have been one of them.

Gregg’s plan starts from conservative principles: market competition, transparency, individual responsibility and a serious attempt to reduce the growth in federal health spending.

But many of the policies he ends up with should be familiar to those following the healthcare debate: reforms to cut costs and improve quality by changing how healthcare providers are paid, no-cost or low-cost preventive care, premium discounts for those who participate in employer wellness programs, an end to insurer abuses such as lifetime caps and rejecting those with preexisting conditions, and a requirement that all Americans get coverage, along with subsidies to help them afford it.

These policies mirror prescriptions agreed on by healthcare experts from the right and the left. And they are found in the president’s plan as posted Monday on the Internet.

To be sure, Gregg’s plan differs from the president’s proposal. Gregg would pay for his plan by having Medicare beneficiaries pay for more of their care, and by taxing healthcare benefits above $11,500 a year for families and $5,000 for individuals. He sees medical malpractice reform as central to containing healthcare costs. Obama relies on savings from making government health programs more efficient and a tax on more lavish, “Cadillac” insurance plans.

The coverage offered under Gregg’s plan would not be as comprehensive as that called for in the president’s version. And Gregg’s proposal lacks a key administration-backed mechanism to make cost-containment efforts stick: an Independent Payment Advisory Board that would insulate decisions about Medicare provider payment policy from special-interest lobbying and congressional politics.

The Gregg plan would probably cost the government less up front, but the Congressional Budget Office has yet to score whether it can come close to the trillion dollars or more in long-term deficit reduction included in Obama’s plan.

But focusing on these policy differences obscures what’s most important about Gregg’s proposal: After a year in which “debate” has been defined by partisan talking points and parliamentary maneuvers, his proposal shows that it’s possible for Republicans and Democrats to find common ground. Acknowledging this fact -- and then hashing out the differences between the proposals in good faith -- would be a conversation worth having.

If Republican leaders are serious about wanting to solve America’s healthcare problems, they should take the hand Obama is offering to look for common ground, rather than make excuses to maintain the status quo. Gregg’s proposal would be a great place to start.

Larry McNeely is a healthcare advocate for the national consumer advocacy organization U.S. PIRG. Mike Russo is a healthcare advocate for the group’s California arm, CALPIRG.