As President Barack Obama promotes health care reform with campaign-style events this week, he is making the case for a plan that does not exist.
In the Senate, lawmakers have just begun jousting over health policy. And with the president’s August deadline for a workable plan fast approaching, Obama will soon have to take a position on an actual plan and not extoll a hypothetical one.
Democrats are deeply at odds over two competing health care proposals in the Senate.
One bill, the product of the Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, includes a expansive public health insurance program and has no GOP support.
A Finance Committee plan calls for a more modest government option aimed at protecting the private insurance market, and is likely to pick up some Republican backing, according to those knowledgeable with the discussions.
The dueling plans have prompted Obama to take to the airwaves to push for health care reform.
He has also started a grassroots campaign to get the public behind it — or at least the idea of it.
Obama has also sent a letter to Health Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. that pushes the public health care option.
The letter was an effort to bring the two Democratic sides together and draw some bipartisan support as well, but this may be an impossible feat.
A bill centered on a strong public health care program will not get more than token GOP support, if any at all, and it might cost the backing of some moderate Senate and House Democrats.
Democrats will likely be able to pass any bill they want since it will not require the typical 60-vote supermajority, but experts warn this would result in a weaker law that leaves Democrats open to future political attacks.
“This is going to run into a lot of headwind, so you want both parties’ fingerprints on it,” said Henry Aaron, a former health department deputy secretary under President Jimmy Carter who is now a scholar at the Brookings Institution. “You don’t want Republicans to run against Democrats on the difficulties that are inevitably going to arise.”
The Obama administration, some observers say, is working to avoid the mistakes the Clinton administration made in its failed attempt at reforming health care 15 years ago.
“One of the big problems the Clintons had was a protracted debate,” said Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “So the Obama administration’s plan has been not to have a plan and I think that is very smart. The opposition has nothing to fight against. Like shadow boxing, there is no opponent to punch at.”
