As we hurtle forward with health care reform, the National Journal this week on its blog posed the question, does the August recess deadline matter? 

The ACC responded with the following:

Deadlines can be helpful. They represent a benchmark for Congress to work toward and are a clear alternative to battling over health care reform without an end in sight. However Congress has a tendency to meet deadlines with quick fixes rather than meeting the needs of the people in the time allowed. Not only are these band-aid fixes ineffective, they leave the real problems for someone else to fix down the road. For example, look at the physician reimbursement formula to Medicare from 2008. Under a statutory deadline many doctors could no longer afford to see Medicare patients because the physician reimbursement formula had expired. It wasn’t until a month later, after Congress returned from recess that our legislators came to an agreement – albeit temporary. Over the course of this past year, physicians received a .5 percent increase in Medicare reimbursements, followed by a 1.1 percent increase this year. But in 2010, it’ll be back to the drawing board …

In order to achieve real comprehensive health care reform, efforts must be bipartisan. Health care is too important an issue to be denigrated into a match of dueling talking points on Capitol Hill and cable news.  In order to achieve real reform, we must have a legitimate discussion and debate that centers around patients and how best to provide the quality health care they deserve … The most important thing is that Congress get it right this time, not with quick fixes but with real health care reform.

To read our full post, click here. What are your thoughts? Will a deadline help or hurt our efforts to achieve comprehensive, lasting health care reform?

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