The Alliance for Health Reform recently held a press briefing with key Democratic and Republican staffers to ask how wide has the window opened for health reform. We'd highly recommend watching the video or at least perusing the transcript.

Jocelyn Moore, a health staffer for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) saw the window as wide open indeed because "the current economic crisis is also a crisis of healthcare." She likened Obama's selection of Tom Daschle for Secretary of HHS to a starting gun that gets everyone racing toward a finish line.

John McDonough, senior adviser on Health Reform for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), emphasized all the work already under way to engage stakeholders and create a foundation for bipartisan consensus. Stressing the need to learn from 1993-94, McDonough recalled an editorial in JAMA from 1991 proclaiming: "National health care reform. An aura of inevitability is upon us."

The Senate Republican perspective came from Mark Hayes and Chuck Clapton, respectively from the Senate Finance and HELP Committees. Both stressed Republicans' strong support for addressing health care next year, provided it was done right. A crucial component of any health reform from a Republican perspective Clapton argued was that it be built around market-based competition (which suggests that a public plan as one insurance option people could choose may be an early fault lines in the coming debate.) While McDonough suggested that a public plan could be an important way to control costs, both Hayes and Clapton were skeptical of how private plans could compete against a public option. On the National Journal's Health Care Experts blog, the public plan question has already elicited lively debate from various stakeholder groups and policymakers.

The Q&A touched on health IT (necessary, but how much and how soon?), financing (how do you make space in the budget for the upfront costs of long-term investments) and the budget process in general (both Hayes and Clapton bristled at the thought of doing health reform via the reconciliation process).

It was refreshing to hear Democrats and Republicans talking so openly and agreeing so much on what needs to change. We hope such dialogue will continue into the next Congress—and hope that after getting insight into the Senate perspective we get to hear more from the House at the next forum we attend.