Lawmakers Must Address Health Issues
The "big question" is whether bipartisan action to provide emergency prescription drugs for those having problems with the Medicare drug benefit "will create momentum for other much-needed positive change in health care," according to a Sacramento Bee opinion piece by Peter Harbage, a senior program associate at the New America Foundation and president of Harbage Consulting, and Len Nichols, director of the health policy program at NAF.
Harbage and Nichols write that there are "four bipartisan health issues that show promise": fighting obesity, launching the health care Quality and Cost-Containment Commission, issuing bonds for hospital seismic safety requirements and providing health coverage for all children.
If these issues are addressed California leaders will be able to "prove to themselves and the citizens that elected officials can actually work together to do important things," Harbage and Nichols write (Harbage/Nichols, Sacramento Bee, 3/19).