For the first time in nearly a decade, the game plan of the managed-care industry’s lobby is shifting to offense from defense.
The American Association of Health Plans, which represents most of the nation’s managed-care plans, says growing support from large self-insured employers and small businesses is helping it fend off political attacks and stall momentum for a patients’ bill of rights in Washington.
That hasn’t always been the case. For much of the 1990s, managed-care companies were favorite targets of the Clinton administration and the Chicago-based American Medical Association. And the industry got little respite last year when then-Vice President Al Gore made managed-care reform a key issue in his presidential campaign.
Yet health insurers gathering here in Washington this week at AAHP’s annual spring policy conference say they now have “thousands of allies” outside of the health-insurance industry to help them reach a compromise on managed-care reform. For example, Richard Rivera, president of Red Lobster Restaurants, is a headline speaker at this meeting.
“What is gone from this issue is the steamroller,” said Mark Merritt, vice president and chief of strategic planning for the association. “The days where this was seen as an issue of political fear are gone. We now have a national database of employers on our side.”
Managed-care plans and employers are opposed to a patients’ bill of rights, which could open self-insured companies to liability. Currently, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act protects self-insured plans from lawsuits.
Four years ago, the health plan association began to spend more money outside Washington on advertising and marketing to consumers. The association spent a record $5 million last year on advertising, public relations and so-called grassroots expenditures typically used to educate employers and their workers.
Furthermore, the association also joined forces with small business groups and major employers to create the Health Benefits Coalition two years ago, to show a more unified front against patients’ rights legislation.
“In 1997 and 1998, we had to play almost total defense .. but now we have an offensive leg to stand on,” Merritt said. “People now realize that if you eviscerate managed-care, you are hurting your constituents, your employers.”
The association regularly rolls out an association-funded poll showing 65 percent of the nation’s consumers would rather subject their health plans’ medical decisions to independent reviews and appeals rather than lawsuits.
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Still, the managed-care lobby isn’t becoming so confident that its members aren’t prepared to spend more money on advertising or to further rev up their outreach campaigns. “We’re prepared to do what it takes,” Merritt said.
Second time around? Thomas Scully, the longtime chief executive of the Washington-based lobby representing the nation’s for-profit hospitals, could soon find himself with great influence over Medicare policy.
As president of the Federation of American Hospitals, Scully is being mentioned as the next head of the Health Care Financing Administration, which runs Medicare.
Scully’s list of credentials includes working in the administration of George W. Bush’s father when the elder Bush was president.
When contacted Monday, Scully wouldn’t comment.
Board bounced: The top five executives at BASF AG’s Knoll Pharmaceuticals unit won’t be joining their proposed new parent company, Abbott Laboratories of North Chicago.
Abbott, which is finalizing its $6.9 billion purchase of the German conglomerate’s drug business, has confirmed that the five-member BASF pharmaceutical executive board, including unit head Thorlef Spickschen, will step down after the deal closes, expected by the end of March.
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