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Monday, July 14, 2014

Health Care Reform Articles - July 14, 2014

Andrew Dreyfus: The last health care reform optimist

As CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Dreyfus is convinced medical costs can be reined in. And, yes, in a way that both political parties can agree on.

ANDREW DREYFUS stands at the front of a Washington, D.C., hotel ballroom. He’s spelling out how his state crafted the nation’s first universal health coverage law and is now tackling the even tougher challenge of rising medical costs. This is, to be clear, not a rapt throng of Apple fanatics hanging on every word from a stage-pacing CEO about the latest iPhone tweaks. This is a sober audience of buttoned-down insurance barons listening to a wonkish peer talk about Massachusetts policy. And he could not be more enthusiastic.
“We forged an enduring agreement on some of the thorniest and most challenging issues in health care,” he tells the gathering.
Is this guy serious?
While the US health care overhaul is under attack from critics who want it dismantled and his state is grappling with the highest health costs in the nation, Dreyfus is unfazed. He may just be the last health care reform optimist amid the partisan free-for-all. His message to colleagues in other states: We’re making it work. You can, too. “We have a health care system in Massachusetts where nearly everyone is covered, and we’re making significant progress on that Holy Grail of better care and lower cost,” he says in an earnest tone.
He is not exactly an unbiased voice. But he is a confident one. Dreyfus is the 55-year-old chief executive of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the largest health insurer in the state that paved the path to Obamacare. Dreyfus has honed his “how we do it in the Bay State” talk through repetition. He’s given variations to congressional leaders on Capitol Hill, hospital and medical technology chiefs in Atlanta, directors of a renowned New York research foundation, and graduate students at Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania. At a time when President Obama’s new health care law is still playing out and November’s midterm elections may turn on its results, Dreyfus is out there like a brainy but fervent cheerleader for a team that’s struggling to find its identity.

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