There is still time for Congress to take healthcare action

Physicians and others in healthcare are facing a legislative environment in Washington, D.C., unlike any they’ve seen in the past decade, says Bob Doherty, senior vice president of governmental affairs and public policy with the American College of Physicians. And it’s not just because the November elections effectively shorten the legislative year for Congress.

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Rather, he points to Congress last year finally solving the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) problem that had vexed it for so many years as being the game changer for healthcare this year. Solving SGR “paved the way for Congress to look at other issues. A lot of those wouldn’t have gotten on Congress’s agenda this year,” if lawmakers once again had to wrestle with a temporary SGR “doc fix” as they’d done in the past, he says.

Chief among the issues Doherty sees Congress addressing this year are opioid painkiller abuse and incentives in the area of chronic care management. Final legislation may be difficult to pass in an election year, he concedes, but that doesn’t mean Congress won’t make progress on major issues that could result in future legislation, Doherty contends.

Doherty recently spoke to Medical Economics on his healthcare legislative outlook for the year.

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Medical Economics: Can Congress do much more than study and educate itself about healthcare issues in an election year?

Bob Doherty: I think education and study doesn’t really give enough credit to what’s going on. If you can actually get a committee to report legislation out on whatever issues you want to talk about, that is something. You’ve succeeded in getting it through all the partisanship and next year it will put us in a far more advantageous position to move those pieces of legislation forward. I think such efforts this year will lay the groundwork for it to bloom next year.

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