New York Times — Health Policy Now Carved Out at a More Centrist Table
Writers David Herszenhorn and Robert Pear go inside the Senate negotiating room where the last hope for health care reform resides and find junk food and a strong sense of significance.
As Examiner colleague Susan Ferrechio observed, hopes for ramming through a party-line health vote a la cap and trade are fading as Speaker Nancy Pelosi gives her new timeline as “whenever.”
That means the only way forward will likely be the Senate Finance Committee where a bipartisan group hammers out details in Chairman Max Baucus’ office day after day.
The bill they’re working up would require all Americans to have insurance but not include the creation of another government-run plan. Some of the money would come through a tax on lavish health benefits. There are still issues to be worked out and some Democrats are growing deeply resentful of Baucus’ holding up he process to obtain his objective of a bipartisan bill, but as Pelosi acknowledged Monday, almost everyone agrees that the Baucus group is the only hope for getting something done. And the approaches – slow compromise in the Baucus groups versus the legislative high hat being offered by Pelosi – could hardly be more different.
“Often a single topic can consume an entire day or more. On Wednesday of last week, it was Mediciad, the federal-state insurance program for low-income people that was likely to be expanded but was also a major factor in the legislation’s high cost.
Another recent topic has been how to create payment incentives for doctors and other providers to work in collaborative teams, as part of so-called accountable care organizations.
“The talks are free-flowing,” Ms. Snowe said. “Max is very inclusive,” she said of Mr. Baucus.
Members of the group methodically work through issues. When they reach a tentative agreement, Mr. Baucus asks, “Can I put down a ‘T’?”
Washington Post — S.C. Senator Is a Voice Of Reform Opposition
Writer Phillip Rucker tries to get inside the world of Sen. Jim DeMint with a visit to South Carolina and a conversation with the senator. What he discovers is that the reason DeMint can be such a fiery foe of a national health plan is that the people of his home state are with him all the way.
There is a whiff of surprise in the piece that working class people in a state hard hit by economic woes would oppose some more help from the government in hard times. Rucker almost gets the strong liberty-or-death attitude that runs through the Palmetto State, but stops short of accepting that poor people can afford ideals.
DeMint has not made the Republican job on opposing Democratic health care plans easier since he cares less about sounding reasonable than his colleagues from less liberty-minded states.
But neither have Democrats succeeded with trying to make DeMint a pariah who forces other members of his party toward Obama or be marginalized. After the bust of trying the same move with Dick Cheney, one would think that the White House would quit trying to anoint new leaders of the GOP. Having already erred by running ads against it’s own fractious senators, the DNC is instead all in on the DeMint effort, even spending big to try to bring home-state pressure on the Senator, a shoo-in for reelection next year.
“The Democratic National Committee seized upon the [Waterloo] remark, airing a television ad on cable stations here accusing DeMint of ‘trying to kill health-care reform’ and ‘playing politics with health care.’ The party announced on Monday that it had extended the ad through Friday, and a Democratic official said DeMint’s outspokenness is helping to recruit candidates to challenge him in 2010 when he faces voters again.
‘We’re certainly not trying to quiet Jim DeMint,’ DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse said. “He’s given us a gift because we’re able to go to other Republican members and say, ‘Do you agree with Jim DeMint that health care should be used to break the president politically?’ I don’t think it at all has been helpful to the Republicans.’”
Wall Street Journal — Consensus Hard to Come by Without Key Players
Writer Jerry Seib suggests that one of the reasons a national health plan has been so hard for the White House to come by is the unexpected loss of several key voices on the issue: Rep. John Dingell, Sen. Ted Kennedy, former Sen. Tom Daschle and Sen. John McCain.
The big figures with bipartisan credibility on issues have been rendered silent by ill health, political machinations, electoral defeat or their own mistakes, leaving Obama to rely on the likes of Henry Waxman and Chris Dodd to fulfill his goals.
McCain is a most interesting case, as I observed in Monday’s column, and Seib examines today:
“Last year’s unsuccessful presidential nominee is still representing Arizona in the Senate. But paradoxically, the fact that he was the Republican standard-bearer in 2008 now crimps his ability to play the role he once would have assumed, as chief Senate maverick willing to seek agreement across the aisle on tough problems.
More than that, Mr. McCain proposed during the presidential campaign to fund his version of a revamped health-care system by taxing employer-sponsored insurance benefits, compelling then-candidate Obama to take a stand against that idea. Now it’s harder for Mr. Obama to reverse course — and harder for Mr. McCain to swoop in with his financing idea, which just might be the smartest approach with the potential to cut through the Gordian knot now stalling a bill in the Senate.”
Politico — W.H. meeting set with Gates, Crowley
Thursday at 6 pm will be Miller Time at the White House as Harvard Scholar Henry Louis Gates and the officer who arrested him, Mike Crowley, join the president for a little refreshment.
Despite the blowback Obama received for his flip comments about Gates’ arrest, the event has actually seemed to be a welcome distraction for the White House, rolling out details and yukking it up over beer choices at the daily press briefing.
Now that the matter is on more genial terms – suds-based racial harmony rather than the president scolding police for racist behavior – it may be a better issue for the White House than talking about why health care is stalled, which is the only topic of interest politically until after the August congressional recess.
If the happy hour can come and go with only a few innocuous details slipping out, the president will have wrapped up his latest gaffe with limited losses. If Gates or Crowley make unhappy noises after the event it will deepen the political damage done by Obama’s commentary.
“The charge of disorderly conduct was dropped by the Cambridge, Mass., police amid a national debate over the propriety of the arrest. Obama said at his news conference last week that the policy had acted “stupidly,” although he later said he “could have calibrated those words differently.”
USA Today — Hawaii: Obama birth certificate is real
The other big distraction this week for the White House has been the belief among many that President Obama wasn’t actually born in Hawaii, but rather in his father’s native Kenya. The White House has addressed the question again and now the Hawaiian government is getting back in the mix.
Writer Dan Nakaso explains that the state health director has repeated her assertion that Obama’s paperwork is in order and that she has seen the actual birth certificate – the document that the “birthers” want to see but the White House declines to disclose.
The controversy even made it’s way into Congress:
“A congressional resolution introduced by Hawaii Rep. Neil Abercrombie commemorating the 50th anniversary of Island statehood was postponed today apparently because of a “whereas” clause noting Obama’s Hawaii birthplace… Before Rep. Michelle Bachman’s objection, Abercrombie spokesman Helfert had said some birthers believe the resolution ‘means the House of Representatives is on the record that Hawaii is the birthplace of the president of the United States.’”
