Lilly, WellPoint CEOs pin health care reform hopes on Senate

After the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed a sweeping health care overhaul, leaders of Indiana’s two
largest health care entities turned their hopes to the U.S. Senate to give them a bill more to their liking.

WellPoint Inc. CEO Angela Braly is counting on the Senate’s airing the “true impact”
of the House bill, which she has warned could include layoffs at her company, higher insurance premiums
for those currently covered, and even hospitals going bankrupt.

Braly

“I do think there is an expectation that the process in the Senate will be a fulsome one and there
will be a great discussion about the true impact of these reforms,” Braly said Nov. 9 at the Reuters Health Summit in
New York, according to the news agency.

Meanwhile, drugmakers like
Eli Lilly and Co. were upset that the House bill would allow Medicare to use its
buying power to negotiate larger discounts from drugmakers, something Lilly has likened to price
controls.

Legislation pending in the Senate includes no such provision,
which drugmakers have fought intensely since 2003.

“We feel much more encouraged by what’s developing in the Senate,” Lilly
CEO John Lechleiter said at the summit, according to Reuters.

Lechleiter

The house
bill does include the biggest goal this session for Lilly and its peers: the approval of a
pathway for cheaper generic biotech drugs that would allow Lilly to shield its data on its drugs for
12 years after a drug wins market approval, rather than the five years allowed for standard chemical
drugs.

That provision is important to Lilly because half the experimental
drugs in its pipeline are biotech drugs, meaning they are proteins derived from living
cells, instead of standard drugs synthesized from chemicals.

With
the insurance industry turning increasingly against the pending reform bills, Braly listed several negative
impacts she anticipates from the House bill.

It
“would actually raise the cost for those with coverage,” she said at the Reuters summit,
because of higher taxes and insurance market reforms that would raise coverage costs.

Braly said she fears that the government-run insurance plan, or public option, included in the House
bill could lead to lower payments for hospitals, closer to the rates Medicare and Medicaid pay now, which
are substantially lower than what private insurers pay.

“Our perception is it could potentially bankrupt some hospitals, depending on the scenario,”
Braly told the Reuters summit audience. She added that could make it more difficult for patients to receive care: “The
question is whether we’re solving or creating access problems in another way.”

However, the Congressional Budget Office predicts the House public option would
negotiate rates with hospitals and doctors, meaning it would pay rates similar to
companies like WellPoint. Because it would not have a competitive pricing advantage over private insurers,
the CBO estimates only about 6 million Americans would choose the public option.

President Obama, in an e-mail to supporters after
the House passed the bill, wrote, “Tonight’s vote brought every American closer to the secure,
affordable care we need.”