President Obama speaks at a White House health summit on March 5

A report from the Senate committee charged with drafting U.S. health reform legislation shows a strong commitment to including long-term care services and supports in the overall plan.

Meanwhile, President Obama has indicated his support for a national health reform plan that reduces costs, guarantees choice, and provides affordable coverage. He has publicly urged the Senate to press forward on the legislation so that it can reach his desk by October.

The report, “A New Vision for American Health Care: Strengthening What Works and Fixing What Doesn’t” (pdf), offers the first broad look at where the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy, is headed in its efforts to develop comprehensive health reform legislation. The committee cites six key goals:

• Assuring reliable, high quality and affordable health insurance for all Americans
• Improving value by creating a higher quality, more efficient delivery system
• Building a new framework to enhance prevention and wellness
• Creating a durable structure of long term supports and services for seriously
  disabled Americans
• Rooting out fraud and abuse in the public and private health systems
• Establishing shared responsibility and paying appropriately and fairly for reform

The briefing paper notes, “For persons with disabilities and seniors with chronic illness, long-term services and supports are their primary unmet health care needs. These are critical to promoting health, preventing illness, and helping people to function independently instead of in institutions.”

Steve Edelstein, PHI national policy director, commented that “several of the HELP committee’s goals require investment in a skilled and well-supported direct-care workforce. With the right training, direct-care workers can play a key role in care coordination, improving the health and wellness of  Americans with disabilities and chronic illnesses and thereby helping to reduce costs overall.”

In related news, President Obama summoned Kennedy and Montana Senator Max Baucus, the chief architects of the new legislation, to the White House on June 2 to urge them to find common ground (“Obama urges Senate Democrats to settle healthcare issues,” Boston Globe, June 3).

The White House also released a letter from Obama (pdf) urging Sens. Kennedy and Baucus to finish the bill so that it can reach his desk later this year. “We simply cannot afford to postpone health care reform any longer,” the letter said. “[T]he status quo is broken, and pouring money into a broken system only perpetuates its inefficiencies.”

The letter expressed Obama’s approval of the overall direction the HELP committee is taking, and stated that, in addition to cutting overall U.S. healthcare spending by $309 billion over the next decade, the President wants to cut $200 to $300 billion from Medicare and Medicaid.

The letter also reiterated Obama’s support for a public health insurance option, which many believe is critical to reducing America’s health care costs.

The Boston Globe said the letter was “the clearest summary yet of what Obama wants in a healthcare plan” (“Obama urges Kennedy, Baucus to press ahead on healthcare,” June 3).