The Center for American Progress hosted a conference call for the media yesterday with Senate Finance Committe Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT), and the President and co-founder of Doctors for America Dr. Vivek Murthy. The two, along with CAP President John Podesta, discussed strategies for moving towards comprehensive health care reform by this fall against the backdrop of studies released by CAP detailing the fact that, in Podesta’s words “the relationship between employment and health care is breaking down.”

The following is a map from the CAP site presenting some of their data:

Dr. Murthy’s organization is a year-old “grassroots” organization of doctors (by grassroots, I – or rather he – means completely member-funded and member-organized and not supported by an outside interest) which is prepared to be closely involved with the discussions over and promotion of reforms it sees as meaningful. His presence underscored the intention of Baucus, in cooperation with Senator’s Kennedy’s Health Committee, the House, and the White House, to depend heavily on the support of the medical community to promote their ultimate plan, whatever it may be. Some details on what is informing those discussions after the flip…

Baucus sounds likely to be the Senate point man on this, given Kennedy’s ailing health. But he expressed a strong commitment to seizing the opportunity to make significant changes in the American health care (non)system. He indicated that they are breaking out their analysis of the problem into three parts: delivery system reform, expanding coverage, and financing the system.

Delivery system reform is the main piece they have been engaging with up to now, with their approach on increased efficiency and cost savings informed by the work of Dartmouth’s John Wennberg, who has found dramatic differences in treatment between American hospitals, and advocates for more uniform, conservative, patient-focused treatment to cut costs. Baucus suggests that some of those savings could even be passed to providers in the face of declining medicare and medicaid reimbursements, given the drop-off in recent years.

But today, the committee starts holding roundtable discussions on the coverage issue, which is likely to kick the profile of these early discussions up a few notches.

Of course the big subtopic in this debate has been the matter of the “public option.” Presumably, the uninsured will be presented with a menu of options from a variety of insurance payers. A fundamental pillar of this approach among all the Democratic candidates for President last year was that one of these options would be a publicly funded one like medicare or medicaid. The pretense for opposing this from Republicans and some Democrats is that any public plan will just be too appealing and will draw participants away from the private plans.

(Yeah, that’s right – it’ll be too good. Can’t have that, can we?)

And of course, the GOP has reason for concern. During the campaign, John Edwards made no bones about the fact that such an approach could grease the wheels to a single payer system by creating the opportunity and the impetus for more and more citizens to buy into public coverage voluntarily, rather than imposing it by federal fiat. Realistically, I’ve seen little evidence that this administration would see that as a desirable goal, and as such would not be likely to encourage such a process, as Edwards would have (and Baucus is certainly not interested, pronouncing as he did that “we are not Canada, we are not Switzerland” and will be crafting “an American solution”). In fact, many observers have been concerned by some administration signals indicating a backing away from the public option entirely, although Obama himself recently affirmed his support for such an element to an eventual reform package.

For Baucus’s part, he indicated “it (the public option) wasn’t off the table, but it wasn’t at the center of the table,” which he further explained to mean that none of the most controversial aspects to an eventual package are being discussed at this point, as there’s a desire to attempt some degree of bipartisan consensus on some of the more peripheral elements and principles before moving to the divisive ones (notice, for example, that funding the system was the last thing on his list for discussion above).

In fairness, its hard to read the depth and quality of the commitment to bipartisanship at this stage. Given the intense take-no-prisoners partisanship of this Republican caucus, any absolute devotion to bi-partisanship would seem to amount to a policy suicide pact. But in any event, at this stage of the game, the open hand must be extended. We just have to hope that, given recent history, Baucus and his colleagues have some understanding of what they’re in for in the real world of Washington, and that’s not necessarily a safe bet based on this caucus’s history.

But the good news is that there does seem to be a clear intention to move quickly, and that the grassroots groundwork is already being laid to support change. Baucus stated his desire to have a bill out of his committee by mid-June.

And, of course, none of this could happen a moment too soon as, according to Podesta, the economic crisis is causing a bad situation to get worse quickly. Since 1999, the average employee contribution for health care has gone up over 80% when adjusted for inflation (well over 100% if left unadjusted). He quoted a recent survey which indicated that 19% of employers are planing to stop offering benefits in next 2-5 years. And nationally, 320,000 Americans have lost employee-sponsored health care in March alone.

In other words, there’s no time like the present.