| Gish08 |
08-16-2009 02:55 PM |
White House backs away from public health care option - Carrie Budoff Brown - POLITICO.com
Quote:
W.H. backs away from public option
By: Carrie Budoff Brown
August 16, 2009 02:02 PM EST
President Barack Obama and his top aides are signaling that they’re prepared to drop a government insurance option from a final health-reform deal if that’s what’s needed to strike a compromise on Obama’s top legislative priority.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday that the public option was “not the essential element” of the overhaul. A day earlier, Obama downplayed the public option during a Colorado town hall meeting, saying it was “just one sliver” of the debate.
He even chided Democratic supporters and Republican critics for becoming “so fixated on this that they forget everything else” – a dig at some liberals in his own party who have made the public option the main rallying cry of the health reform debate.
At the same time, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), one of six senators involved in bipartisan Finance Committee negotiations, all but declared the public option dead in the Senate.
“Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” said Conrad, who has pushed an alternative proposal to create a network of consumer cooperatives. “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”
A White House aide said in an emailed statement Sunday afternoon that "nothing has changed" in the administration's approach.
"The President has always said that what is essential is that health insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health insurance market," said Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform. "He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.
But taken together, the remarks from Obama, Sebelius and Conrad suggest the White House is preparing supporters for a health care compromise that may well exclude the government option – which could help Obama win enough votes for a sweeping overhaul but touch off a nasty battle inside his own party between liberals and more moderate members who have resisted a bigger government role in health care.
It was only in June that Obama said in a letter to Senate Democrats that “I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.”
But in the face of hardening opposition to the idea — even inside his own party — Obama appears ready to retrench. Obama and his aides continue to emphasize having some competitor to private insurers, perhaps non-profit insurance cooperatives, but they are using stronger language to downplay the importance that it be a government plan.
“What's important is choice and competition,” Sebelius said on CNN’s State of the Union. “And I'm convinced at the end of the day, the plan will have both of those. But that is not the essential element.
The reaction in the liberal blogosphere and beyond was swift and negative Sunday.
“Ultimately if the president decides he’s going to go with a reform effort that doesn’t ******* a public option, what he will have done is spent a ton of political capital, riled up an incredibly angry right wing base that’s been told this is a plot to kill grandma, and he will have achieved something that doesn’t change health care very much and that doesn’t save us very much money and won’t do much for the American people,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It’s not a very good thing to spend a lot of political capital on."
One diarist on the Daily Kos said the “public option is in the ICU. … When you call something that once was the central tenet of reform is now a ‘sliver,’ it is very difficult to argue it is not being de-emphasized.” Another diarist wrote this headline: “Told you so: Public Option, Meet Underside of Bus.”
“It would be very, very difficult without the public option,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on whether she could support a bill that dropped the public option. She spoke on CNN's State of the Union.
Liberals say a health care bill without a public option would fail to actually reform the system. They view the public option as the best way to hold insurance companies accountable and provide affordable coverage, and say nonprofit cooperatives are an unproven model.
"Secretary Sebelius made the case for the public option several times in the interview, talking about why we needed competition and choice with private insurers," said Richard Kirsch, campaign manager of Health Care for American Now, a liberal organization pushing the government option. "She also pointed out that reform is more than the public option: it's regulating private insurers and making health care affordable to everyone. It's clear from her statements that the most effective reform will have all these elements - insurance regulations, making health care affordable to all, and a strong, national public health insurance option."
Sebelius, following Obama’s lead Saturday in Colorado, sought to shift the focus of the debate from the public option to more popular reforms such as prohibiting insurers from denying or dropping coverage because of a preexisting condition. It’s a subtle, but potentially telling, window into the White House’s latest strategy on reframing the terms of a legislative victory.
“Those are really essential parts of the program, along with choice and competition, which I think we'll have at the end of the day,” Sebelius said.
Obama first raised eyebrows Saturday in Colorado when he suggested the final package may not ******* a public option.
“All I'm saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” he said. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And by the way, it's both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else.”
On CBS's Face the Nation, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked if the government option had to be included in the final bill. He repeated the standard White House line that the president's wants to "inject some choice competition into the private insurance market."
But then, he appeared to hedge.
"The president has thus far sided with the notion that that can best be done through a public option," Gibbs said.
"Is that a hedge?" asked host Harry Smith, referring to Gibbs' use of "thus far."
"No, no, no, what I am saying is the bottom line for the president is that we ought to have choice and competition in the insurance market," Gibbs responded.
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Blue Dogs just gave the whole party Blue Balls when it comes to reform.
As a liberal, I question the need for reform if there's no public option.
This country sucks.
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