The presidents Really Big Healthcare Pitch, part two (Public option? What public option?)

December 22, 2009 · Posted in Healthcare, Politics

President Obama never promised you a rose garden ... or a public option ...

President Obama is putting on the hard sell to convince Americans to love health reform, and rather than seeking to soothe the base, he’s employing a rather different strategy: denying he ever promised health reform with a public option. From the WaPo, Obama starts out on offense:

President Obama rejected in an interview Tuesday the criticism that he has compromised too much in order to secure health-care reform legislation, challenging his critics to identify any “gap” between what he campaigned on last year and what Congress is on the verge of passing.

“Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill,” Obama said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post about his legislative record this year. “Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.”

… In the interview, Obama offered a vigorous defense of the legislation and the priorities he set out in shaping it, saying he is “not just grudgingly supporting the bill. I am very enthusiastic about what we have achieved.”

He said the Senate legislation accomplishes “95 percent” of what he called for during his 2008 presidential campaign and in his September speech to a joint session of Congress on the need for health-care reform.

The president had much the same message for AURN’s April Ryan, in a similarly feisty interview:

The public option, he said, “is an area that has just become symbolic of a lot of ideological fights.” But, Obama added: “As a practical matter, this is not the most important aspect of this bill — the House bill or the Senate bill.”

Only “a few million people” who buy into the insurance exchange set up in the bill would have benefited from the public option, he said.

“So it wasn’t like suddenly everybody would just go out there and buy a government-run plan,” Obama said. “Most people will still get health insurance from their employers.”

But it’s the following line from the WaPo interview that has the netroots hopping:

Obama said the public option “has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right.” But, he added, “I didn’t campaign on the public option.”

As the folks at FDL put it, “I guess it depends on the meaning of the word “campaign…”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but as ThinkP points out, while it has been pretty darned clear for nearly a year that he wasn’t so wedded to the public option idea that he was willing to fight for it with his friends on Capitol Hill, it’s not quite true … okay not at all true … to say he didn’t campaign on it:

– In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign’s website, candidate Obama promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008]

– During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market.” [6/15/09]

– While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a public option.” [7/17/09]

– During a conference call with progressive bloggers, the President said he continues “to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” [7/20/09]

– Obama told NBC’s David Gregory that a public option “should be a part of this [health care bill],” while rebuking claims that the plan was “dead.” [9/20/09]

Senator Russ Feingold has made it plain that he never felt Obama was behind the public option, because he didn’t fight for it. And it’s fine, I think, for the White House to admit that in the end, they decided that they couldn’t get it past the conservative Democrats, so they decided to trade it away. (It’s also a mark of how weak the administration’s opening gambit is, unless of course the prez is admitting that his “support” for the public option was a head fake to keep liberals on board during the campaign, and as Feingold has said, the bill has ended up exactly where President Obama wanted it to be…) Or perhaps the president is getting a little frustrated at the fact that what ought to be an historic achievement celebrated by Democrats has become the red headed stepchild of historic reform. I can see how they might feel that way, but better to not say things that are this easy to disprove.

Meanwhile, a new poll has some good news: the PR push might be beginning to work, at least on Democrats, who have warmed by 10 points since December 2nd to the Senate healthcare reform plan. And John Cornyn, who’se got a long time between now and his next election, so he can get away with it, even had some nice things to say about the bill (emphasis on “some.”)

And a Democratic strategy memo has a bit more good news: apparently, when the details of the bill are explained, people like it more. Really? You get paid for memos like that? Noted! The memo also drops the veritable nuclear bomb that part of the reason healthcare reform is becoming less popular is because Democrats don’t think it goes far enough. (Sigh.) Again, you get paid???

Next up in the Senate: the Christmas Eve, 8 a.m. vote to end our collective torment and pass the bill. Then they go home and next year, we get to be tortured by the conference committee.

Roland Burris: take us to the bridge …

UPDATE: Obama tries it again, this time on PBS, without the denials:

In an interview with PBS’s Jim Lehrer, President Barack Obama said he wants the public option in a final health care bill, but he will settle for alternatives, like an insurance exchange.

“You know, look, I’ve been in favor of the public option,” he said. “I think the more choice, the more competition we have, the better.”

“On the other hand,” he said, “I think that the exchange itself, the system that we’re setting up that forces insurance companies to essentially bid for three million or four million or five million people’s business, that in and of itself is going to have a disciplining effect.”

“Would I like one of those options to be the public option? Yes. Do I think that it makes sense, as some have argued, that, without the public option, we dump all these other extraordinary reforms and we say to the 30 million people who don’t have coverage, ‘You know, sorry. We didn’t get exactly what we wanted’? I don’t think that makes sense.”

Do you start to get the feeling Obama is as mad at the left as the left is at him?

“I mean, something that’s gotten lost, Jim, during the course of this debate – because this is how Washington works – it ends up being, well, did the president win on that one or did he lose on that one? What’s Joe Lieberman doing today, and what’s Mitch McConnell doing tomorrow?”

In an Oval Office interview with NPR, Obama said the health care debate is nearing an end with success and called opponents “politically driven and ideologically driven.” He added that liberals who griped that there wasn’t a public option in the Senate bill don’t see the bigger picture:

“This notion, I know amongst some on the left, that somehow this bill is not everything that it should be, that we still need a single-payer plan, etcetera, etcetera — I think just ignores the real human reality that this will help millions of people and end up being the most significant piece of domestic legislation at least since Medicare and maybe since Social Security.”

Translation: “what’s a guy got to do to get a little appreciation around here?” (Answer: um … probably more than scold the base …) Sorry, Mr. President, do go on:

He summed up the health care fight as follows: “If you had told me at the beginning of this year that at the end of a grueling process, in which the opposition, I think, has been more politically driven and ideologically driven than substantive, that I’d still have a bill potentially for me to sign that provides 30 million people coverage, provides enormous protections to families who are getting hammered right now when it comes to, you know, the fine print of insurance forms, that is deficit neutral, that is geared towards reducing costs over the long term, that has huge increases in prevention and wellness, [that] sets up additional community health clinics around the country for people who have trouble accessing medicine — I’d say we did really well. And that is, I think, what’s going to happen.”

Convinced yet? Put Jason Linkins down as a “no,” and perhaps more importantly, this lady:

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Rules Committee and co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said that the Senate’s bill is so flawed that it’s unlikely to be resolved in conference with the bill to have passed the House.

“The Senate health care bill is not worthy of the historic vote that the House took a month ago,” Slaughter wrote in an opinion piece for CNN’s website.

Slaughter argued that while the House bill is far from perfect, the Senate bill’s exclusion of a public option, along with abortion funding restrictions and other measures, make the bill undeserving of a vote.Specifically, Slaughter said, the Senate bill would charge seniors higher premiums, would fail to nix health insurers’ antitrust exemption and would not go far enough in extending coverage to people in the U.S.

“Supporters of the weak Senate bill say ‘just pass it — any bill is better than no bill,’ ” Slaughter wrote. “I strongly disagree — a conference report is unlikely to sufficiently bridge the gap between these two very different bills.”

The New York Democrat also sounded a note similar to what Republicans have said (though for different reasons): Scrap the current healthcare bill, and start over.

It sounds like the president’s “boost the bill” strategy isn’t working as yet.

… except that while the Senate bill has long-since lost liberals, and is shaky with liberal House members, its more conservative approach could pick up some Blue Dogs who voted against it the first time around.

Meanwhile, TDB ruminates on the strange new world, in which Jane Hamsher finds a welcoming home on Fox News.

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