Thread by @ASlavitt

The Senate has been working on a health care bill. They will be dropping it soon and is likely to be one of the few pieces of health care legislation with a chance of moving. Opportunity for input.

I will provide a summary and add my thoughts here. Follow if interested.

The first question worth asking is: what kind of bill could pass the Senate?

And the easy answer is something not very transformative or controversial.

Doesn’t make it not worth doing. But it is a reasonable conclusion of where consensus is.

But there’s another answer too.2/

The other truth is that the 2018 health care voter spoke loudly and got a lot of people to understand they need to do something. Take some action. Stand for something before the 2020 election.

So also consider this the product, even if slim, of a lot of activation & voting. 3/

The outline of the bill which you can find here help.senate.gov/chair/newsroom… has five pieces.

Drug costs, prevention, transparency, surprise medical bills & medical records. And while the exact language is being marked up, a few details seem likely. 4/

Ending surprise medical bills as a patient responsibility seems very likely.

The drug cost reforms are likely to be common sense, but modest. Patent reform, more generics. Unlikely to satisfy the public demand, but pharma is hoping some heat comes off.

5/

Other pieces include promotion of vaccines and some provisions on maternal mortality.

There will be a certain amount of room for people to add and subtract basics. And getting something like this through the Senate and the House requires a lot of political calculation. 6/