"Congress must prepare for the work of reforming the health care system," said Senator Max Baucus this morning. "We must develop common understandings of our system, the good and the bad, so we're ready to work towards reform." Today, the Senate Finance Committee is hosting the "Prepare for Launch" health reform summit. Baucus, Grassley, and the rest of the committee are holding panels, giving talks, listening to speeches, and generally putting on a public show of their seriousness about health reform. What does it mean? It's unclear. Baucus says it's about "learning." Grassley says it's about "listening." To the rest of us, it's about watching the subtle cues and signals given off by this assemblage of political power, who're all in one place, talking about one thing. Will the Republicans signal a willingness to expand access? Will the Democrats talk about public plans? What does Baucus favor? The morning plenary was given by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and was basically a bloodless recitation of what readers of this blog already knew. Towards the end, though, Baucus asked him to be a bit clearer on what would happen if Congress doesn't act to arrest the growth of health costs. "Well," said Bernanke, "as a matter of simple arithmetic, if you don't cut costs, one of three things will have to happen. You can shrink everything else, cutting military spending, national parks, and so forth. That's an unpleasant option. You can raise taxes tremendously, which has various costs on efficiency and growth. Or you can have huge deficits." Bernanke said that in the mild tone most of use to tell friends the train schedule, but for those listening closely, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had just laid out a vision of relative fiscal disaster. The question is whether the Senators were listening. And learning.
