GOP Congress May Block Health-Care Funding: Orszag
CNBC.com Writer
President Obama’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, told CNBC Friday that he’s concerned that the new Congress could stymie the health-care bill by blocking funding.
“You could end up where all the legislation is in place, but that implementation is done either very late or in an imperfect way, because of a very constrained funding environment,” said Orszag, who has a new job at Citigroup as a vice chairman in global banking.
Orszag predicted that health-care reform will need an “evolutionary approach” in which promising ideas, such as accountable-care organizations, bundled payments or pay-for-performance need to be tested first.
“We need to try them and then have a mechanism for moving the scale immediately when something proves to be promising or promises to be effective,” said Orszag. “The new legislation does create some mechanisms to do that through the innovation center, through the independent-pay advisory board.”
At his Citi job, Orszag said he would be handling international, macroeconomics and health-care projects, among others.
For more on Orszag, watch The Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo.
