Calling in a top gun
Democratic top gun John Sasso was not in Washington for George Bush's inauguration yesterday. But if he is still licking his wounds a bit, he is also hard at work on his next campaign -- and it has nothing to do with John Kerry's pipe dreams for another run in four years.
The question: Can Sasso do for Massachusetts' important healthcare industry what he did for Raytheon, the state's insurance industry, and the Boston Red Sox? The state's two healthcare giants, Partners HealthCare and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, are betting $2 million that he can.
Partners, parent of Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Blue Cross, by far the state's largest insurer, are supposed to be natural adversaries at contract time. But the two have decided to collaborate as Beacon Hill begins what is expected to be the first serious push for healthcare reform in Massachusetts in a decade.
The two giants -- which have pledged $1 million each over four years to fund cost studies and other initiatives -- have two goals. One is to increase what the state pays the hospitals for Medicaid patients: The hospital industry says there's a $450-million-a-year gap statewide between what it gets paid and its costs. The other goal is to increase the number of people with health insurance, which has been steadily decreasing with the rising price of healthcare.
In Sasso, Partners and Blue Cross chose a strategist who spends most of his time in Washington but is a perfect 4 for 4 on Beacon Hill since opening his Advanced Strategies 15 years ago. He won a disputed tax break for Raytheon in exchange for maintaining jobs in Massachusetts. He won a big tax break for the life insurance industry, and then lobbied on behalf of John Hancock Financial Services for a bill that would allow the company to go public without giving up control (a law Hancock got but never used). And finally, he helped the Red Sox push through public funding for a new Fenway Park (another initiative that, thankfully, never happened either).
Health Care for All's John McDonough calls Sasso ''the Curt Schilling" of political strategists -- just the kind of attention that makes Sasso squirm. Sasso wants to stay under the radar, keep the clients and the issues out front, and build consensus. He runs a one-man shop in Framingham; true to form, he wouldn't comment. Former Hancock chief executive David D'Alessandro, who hired Sasso for two campaigns, says his success comes not in working the State House corridors but in understanding all the constituencies. ''John is modern enough to understand that back-door deals are not the way to get it done," D'Alessandro says.
The Partners-Blue Cross partnership is part self-interest, part public interest. The hospitals have a big stake in getting higher state and federal reimbursements: They estimate they get paid about 80 cents on the dollar for Medicaid patients. And Blue Cross knows that if the hospitals can't get paid by the government, they are going to try to push the difference onto the insurers and their corporate customers.
But both institutions also have a long history of doing well by doing good. For instance, Partners' chief executive, Dr. James Mongan, has spent a career championing universal healthcare. Under Blue Cross boss William Van Faasen, the company started a foundation that has pushed hard to expand healthcare access and offered good ideas how to get there.
New England has been a leader in many industries -- textiles, shoes, minicomputers, to name three -- only to see them go away. Now the future is supposed to be life sciences. Boston's teaching hospitals are at the heart of that future. We'll starve them at our peril.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.
