Here's their letter:
The Honorable Max Baucus
Chairman
Senate Finance Committee
219 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
First and foremost, we appreciate your tireless efforts to craft bipartisan health care reform legislation. In particular, we applaud your work to reduce the growth in health care spending.
As you know very well, the most important challenge we face in reforming the nation’s health care system is getting costs under control. Our country’s spending towers above other industrialized nations. We spend roughly $7300 per American per year while other developed countries spend an average of $2900, yet our health care quality is not any higher. These other countries’ experiences make it clear that the goal of quality, universal, and affordable health care is achievable.
The rapid growth in health spending impacts every American family, every business, as well as our government, and we must consider every option to reduce its ever growing burden. Problems in both private and government health care systems are rooted in these high costs, including our high rate of uninsured Americans and the future solvency of Medicare. Despite past efforts in Congress to lower the rise in health care expenditures, costs continue to skyrocket.
We recognize that tough choices must be made to achieve this goal. In the past, cutting costs has been difficult due to the powerful opposition of the many special interests whose profits would be affected. There are many, wide-ranging options to address the broad and complicated issue of runaway health care costs, and we pledge our support to you in making the necessary and tough decisions. This is our number one priority. If we pass health reform legislation without addressing the issue of health care spending, we will have failed.
Should an issue arise that we can be of help, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.
The only posting I can find on the web rates this letter as support of Baucus' proposal. I showed the letter to Judy. She doesn't feel it is support. We agree that it doesn't propose anything, and appears to be some vague reach toward somehow accommodating Baucus in some even more vague way.
For sure, there are other issues in play than the importance of legislation including the public option, although House legislation probably will not pass without public option inclusion. As the letter says, we need to find as many ways as possible to hold down medical costs.
Can anyone clue me in on what the letter really means?