Health

Mark Isakowitz

care reform "eventually is going to have to be a stakeholder-led issue," Mark Isakowitz, a partner at Fierce, Isakowitz and Blalock said.

With health care now a "tier three issue," members of the Public Sector HealthCare Roundtable and other advocates need to push hard - every day - to raise its profile and get lawmakers to address it, he said. He drew a comparison to asbestos reform, hardly a hot button issue, but something that made its way to near the top of the legislative agenda because people committed to it "woke up every single day and said, 'You have to do this.'"

Isakowitz urged public pension representatives to work with the business community on health care reform, find areas of agreement on which they can focus their combined energies and lobby both Democrats and Republicans relentlessly. "Health care only works when it comes to making big changes when you have some level of bipartisan consensus," he said.