Frist predicts Senate will pass health-care bill

Bill Frist, surgeon and former Senate majority leader, went out on a limb yesterday.

Speaking at a Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce meeting in Center City on health reform, Frist said health reform is a done deal.

"We will have a bill," said Frist, a two-term Republican senator who retired - he says permanently - from politics in 2007. "The bill will pass [the Senate], and it will be very close to what's on the table."

Not only that, Frist said the Senate will pass its version of the bill by Dec. 21, when members "start smelling the fumes of airplanes to take them home." The House passed its version Nov. 7.

The combination of the Senate and House versions will result in a more liberal bill. President Obama will sign that, Frist predicted, before he gives the State of the Union speech in late January.

Frist, who manages to talk as fast as a New Yorker while still sounding like the Tennessean he is, spoke before a receptive crowd of about 200 at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel. Afterward, he signed about 70 copies of his new book, A Heart to Serve: The Passion to Bring Health, Home, and Healing.

His speech was followed by a panel discussion with Jack Carroll, president and chief executive of Magee Rehabilitation Hospital; Joseph Frick, president and chief executive of Independence Blue Cross; James Goodyear, a Lansdale surgeon and president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society; and Peter Turner, president of CSL Behring, a biotherapies company.

Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, who served as moderator, said after the event that he thought Frist's timetable for final approval was too fast. He doesn't think it's possible to bring the two bills together in time for Obama's speech.

Keckley, who told the early-morning crowd he was watching C-Span's health-care coverage at 1 a.m., said the three biggest issues after Senate passage will be reconciling how the House and Senate have approached enforcement of the requirement for individuals to buy insurance, and deciding whether employers will be required to provide insurance and how to pay for the changes.

The House bill, he said, is funded mainly through Medicare cuts and taxes on the wealthy. The Senate's takes a more complex approach, including industry taxes.

Frick said he would rather work within the framework of the current bills than start over. "We're too far down the road," he said. "Everyone believes the current model is not sustainable, and it's more fragile every day."

Goodyear said he saw no reason to rush the process. He thinks Obama should say: " 'Let's not do it fast. Let's do it right,' and I think the American people would welcome that."

Frist said he supported significant changes more than most Republicans. He said that Americans had a "moral obligation" to provide universal health coverage and that the country can afford it. He likes the proposed insurance exchanges, where individuals and small companies could buy insurance as a group.

But, he said, he thinks many Americans are uncomfortable with the level of government spending. He doesn't think the current bills do enough to control costs.

The flip side is opportunity. Frist, one of four partners in Cressey & Co., a private equity firm investing in health care, said, not surprisingly, he thinks this is a good time to invest in health care because there are "one trillion new dollars coming into financial markets with no sort of control whatsoever."