WASHINGTON — Welcoming leaders of the hospital, drug and insurance industries to the White House on Monday, President Obama trumpeted their pledge to work together to contain the nation's skyrocketing healthcare tab.
But as the president was celebrating the collaboration among industry groups responsible for derailing previous healthcare overhaul campaigns, it became apparent that the carefully tended effort was about to face its biggest test.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill plan to introduce legislation in the next few months to reshape the nation's troubled healthcare system. That is expected to kick off an intense struggle as industry groups fight to protect their profits amid efforts to squeeze the cost of delivering healthcare and to increase regulation on drug companies, insurers and others.
"Healthcare's legendary interest groups have stayed at the table in ways that are unprecedented historically," said Drew Altman, a healthcare policy expert who heads the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. "As this debate enters a new phase, the big question is whether they will still be there." Legions of healthcare leaders have been at work for months to assure they will remain part of negotiations.
Consumer groups and insurers, doctors and pharmaceutical companies, labor unions and business groups have been meeting in congressional chambers and conference rooms in Washington to advance the campaign to revamp the healthcare system.
Since September, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who is helping lead the effort, has convened twice-weekly meetings to bring together healthcare industry groups as he develops legislation.
An initiative spearheaded by Families USA, a leading consumer group, employed a professional mediator to help historically antagonistic groups build agreement and what some strategists call an "aura of inevitability" around the current healthcare push.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is also writing healthcare legislation, is hosting round-tables too. So numerous have these "stakeholder" meetings been this year that lobbyists have joked they have little time to do anything but meet.
The groups, some of which have battled one another for decades, have bought ads together to promote a healthcare overhaul and have produced manifestoes endorsing universal healthcare and other goals.
