Executive office update: A rare circumstance: health care politics will be local and national

Friday, July 15, 2016 08:41 AM

by Alfred Gilchrist, CEO Colorado Medical Society

We may be witnessing the rare – as in, pretty-much-never – circumstance in this general election where a national debate on the financing and delivery of health care is both local and national at the same time. Voters will be subjected to a barrage of paid advertising, volunteer door-knocking and the resulting media coverage across at least two, and possibly three, well financed fronts: the presidential contest in a crucial “battleground” state, where the nominees have sharply divergent views on health care policy, ColoradoCare/Amendment 69 (see pro/con analysis staring on page 25) and a probable ballot initiative regarding physician-assisted death. Health care policy will be debated in living rooms, boardrooms and break rooms from now through Election Day.

Unless Coloradans choose to tune out (refraining from TV, smart phones, newspapers or computers), there will be no avoiding health care policy questions raised in this election cycle, and the subjects are among the most intimate and personal that could be contemplated. As voters go down-ballot to local contests for congressional and state legislative candidates, they may also measure those races in health care terms, asking where their state legislative or congressional candidates fall on these large, contentious questions. This rare, pretty-much-never situation provides a series of remarkable opportunities for physicians to engage with candidates and build relationships in the heat of an election cycle where health care is being discussed with the same passions and concerns ordinarily reserved for other more provincial or ideological issues. The arcane world of health policy is no longer an abstraction, but rather a politically relevant and localized debate. In that environment, your ideas can have long-term consequences over the next several sessions of the Colorado General Assembly and in the 115th (2017-18) Congress.

By engaging local physicians in the screening and support of candidates and incumbents through the primaries, we have advanced the balance of legislators and prospective legislators who will defend Colorado’s hard-earned liability and professional review climate, and started a process of building relationships with key legislators and candidates who will listen to our side of things on restoring balance in the transactions between physicians and health insurance companies. On the federal side, health politics beginning in 2017 may very well be more galvanized as the serious questions of coverage, current law and the impending radical realignments of Medicare reimbursement are rinsed through the elections.

Questions of oversight, transparency, accountability and fairness in the business side of physician and insurance company relationships will be guaranteed more than a public hearing. If physicians engage their area legislators this summer and fall, a larger pool of informed legislators will emerge with dispositions anchored in their local medical communities. This is a moment when all health care politics are local, and local relationships are as important as the issues yet to be debated.