To produce politically viable health policy recommendations, former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and George Mitchell announced the launch of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Leaders Project on the State of American Health Care, says a recent release published on the Bipartisan Policy Center Web site.

The project, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, aims to address the delivery, cost, coverage and funding challenges confronting the nation’s healthcare system.

Senator Mitchell said that there is no doubt that concern about healthcare issues is top-of-mind for families and individuals across the country, the press release says. “I believe now is the right time for this issue to finally be resolved. We must galvanize bipartisan support for improving our nation’s healthcare system,” he said.

The project is centered on a series of forums that would address four key topics of healthcare reform: 1) preserving and improving the quality and value of care; 2) providing affordable, accessible coverage choices in a reformed insurance market; 3) ensuring and promoting a strong individual role in healthcare coverage and costs; and 4) securing a workable financing mechanism for healthcare. Each event would be hosted by one of the four leaders. 

The first phase of the project will include a report intended for the public, Congress and administration with solution-driven recommendations for reforming healthcare coverage and delivery in America. In the project’s second phase, the four former senators will advocate their proposals to key decision-makers.

“We need to move beyond ideology and partisanship and meet our common healthcare system challenges with commonsense answers to provide affordable, quality healthcare to everyone in this great nation. We have no more time to waste,” Daschle said.

Without bipartisan efforts, reform will be impossible, said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of RWJF, in the release. “We look to the former Senate majority leaders to show us that bipartisan collaboration and compromise are possible, and that we can meet the demands of the American people and chart a path to reform that will result in coverage and high-quality healthcare for all,” she said.