As Senate and House leaders continue to work to craft a compromise health reform bill, Senator Warner is urging negotiators to remain focused on the ultimate goal of health reform: driving-down medical costs for consumers, businesses and taxpayers.

Senator Warner has joined his colleagues in two separate letters to the Senate leadership strongly urging the negotiators to maintain important cost containment measures in the Senate bill.  The first letter encourages the leadership to maintain the push for greater competition and private sector innovation that were included in the Senate's version of health reform. 

A second letter specifically asks the negotiators to include a “fail-safe mechanism” to require close monitoring and regular reports about whether the hundreds of billions of dollars in projected cost savings are actually being achieved.

If promised health care savings fail to materialize, Congress should have "the tools to bring its actual savings back in line with its original estimates," the letter states.

The process should be tailored in away that enables Congress to address any savings shortfall expeditiously and in the most non-partisan manner possible. It should also be conducted with an eye towards maintaining affordability and quality.

In addition, a letter signed by 14 House Democrats was delivered to the House and Senate leadership recommending that the "Value and Innovation" amendment package introduced by Senator Warner and 11 other Freshman Senators be included in any final bill. 

The letters are below: