Obama Said To Shift Health Care Strategy
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Health Care, Obama
With the news that they’ve lost serious ground with independent voters, the damage control at the Obama White House is in full swing. And that could mean a distinct shift on health care.
Obama is considering detailing his health-care demands in a major speech as soon as next week, when Congress returns from the August recess. And although House leaders have said their members will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option, Obama has no plans to insist on it himself, the officials said. [...]
On health care, Obama’s willingness to forgo the public option is sure to anger his party’s liberal base. But some administration officials welcome a showdown with liberal lawmakers if they argue they would rather have no health care law than an incremental one. The confrontation would allow Obama to show he is willing to stare down his own party to get things done.
“We have been saying all along that the most important part of this debate is not the public option, but rather ensuring choice and competition,” an aide said. “There are lots of different ways to get there.”
One thing’s for sure…if this speech is as advertised then it will signal a big “No way” to passing health care via reconciliation.
So does this mean he’s going to back the Co-Op idea or something more bold?
More as it develops…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 and is filed under Barack, Health Care, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Wyden-Bennett.
Now featuring built-in, bipartisan support.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
I am glad the President is finally going to be speaking out on health care reform. We are well overdue to hear from the President on this issue. It has been quite a while since his major health care reform speeches on June 15, July 17, his major health care reform press conference on July 22, his heath care reform town hall meetings in Wisconsin (June 11), at the White House (June 24), North Carolina and Virginia (July 29) , New Hampshire (Aug 11), Montana (August 14), Colorado (August 15) and maybe a few other major speeches and media events that I might have missed.
This time the President will be telling us what he wants to see in health care reform now, as opposed to what he wanted to see during the campaign, or David Axelrod’s chain-mail missive of August 13 outlining in detail what the administration expected to see from health care reform then.
Speaking of which – I am doing my part. I have been diligently forwarding David’s chain-mail to every e-mail address I can find as he requested me to do.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Just wanted to outline the republican alternative Ryan’s plan, H.R. 2520:
1. tax health insurance benefits
2. provide tax credits of $2,290 for individuals and $5,710 for families (average group cost is13,559 for family coverage and $4,916 for individual coverage in WI)
3. give the insurance industry greater power to skim off the most profitable and healthy individuals.
4. eliminate Medicaid coverage for low-income seniors
5. force low-income families on Medicaid to go out and buy health insurance on the private insurance market
Ryan’s largest political contributor is the health insurance industry, which has given him $493,000.
Ah, the typical republican DB. And yes I took all this verbatim from the link.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:18 pm
It is good that Obama is finally going to start steering the health care debate directly instead of letting it continue to boil over in the background. What he can pull off will be one thing, but at least we’ll know where he sits and he can dive into the debate to advance some solution. I just hope he doesn’t suffer from short attention span and move onto something else too quickly…
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
My biggest fear of what will come out of health care reform is that they will create a mandate for everyone to buy insurance but will not give the people the tools to fight the lack of competition that exists within the private insurance market. If that happens the average American is basically being thrown to the wolves.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Isn’t that the basic Republican plan, Vast? I certainly read it that way.
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:03 am
Justin, MW and anyone else interested in the health care reforms should really take the time and read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care
It’s a really interesting article going over the history and present state of health care and how we got to where we are today.
Though I’m sure Nick will cringe at the recommended conclusions.
Unrelated, but if I ever figured out why newborns only sleep when the parents can’t, I’d probably be a billionaire.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I don’t cringe at his conclusions. I do disagree with them. At times he doesn’t help his case — he acknowledges that a big component of our expense trouble is that we don’t do enough primary care, and then concludes we can solve that by making primary care more expensive for individuals.
He does try to fix this by paying for bi-annual check-ups. But there’s more to preventive care than that. Diabetics, for example, who skip doses of insulin eventually end up in the ER. Where instead of a $20 dose of meds they get special attention from multiple Doctors and Nurses…
I’d actually argue his proposal, with a universal single-payer catastrophic insurance program for all Americans, is MORE government intervention than we have in the current system. My organization (MichUHCAN) is working with Michigan’s Legislature to create a similar program in Michigan.
Age-based premiums are a bit wacky. Health Insurance is supposed to be a Ponzi Scheme.The young pay more than they cost because eventually they’ll be old, and receive more benefits than they pay in premiums. You can’t change this without screwing a lot of baby boomers who do not have huge HSAs from decades of working under the new system. So you’ll have to make up the shortfall, and that won’t be cheap.
In general if an actual politician proposed this I’d seriously consider supporting it. My biggest problem is the age-based premiums. Funding the transition is another potential problem. But that no politician will propose it.
The right won’t think their HSA idea through, so they won’t add things like free bi-annual check-ups. The left has been on single-payer for years. We have looked at the evidence, and concluded it would cut costs and save lives. We ain’t gonna switch without a major internal debate. Especially Unions. They pay lip service to single-payer, but anything threatening the employer based system gets them mighty uncomfortable.
Interest groups could conceivably push this through, but none of them will. We only convinced the GOP to sign onto our catastrophic insurance program by calling it a re-insurance program. You still have a private insurer, but his costs will be nothing after a patient spends $25,000. If the market works at all copays will then be capped at $25,000 per head.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:43 am
He won’t get any credit for standing up to his own party, although it would be a welcome sight. In the long run, though, most of the people yelling and screaming now will be very protective of their health care benefits. He knows that and knows he has to get something done.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Rob,
Thanks for the link. I read through it. Excellent piece. It certainly speaks directly to the false but widely accepted notion that the employer based insurance system we have today has anything to do with a free market.
It also reinforces my support for Wyden-Bennett. Not because Wyden-Bennett aligns with his conclusions – it doesn’t – but because it would take a big first step in that direction of real reform. Wyden-Bennett at least makes the real cost of Health Care Insurance visible to the consumer, and puts choice in the consumer’s hand of how much they want insurance to pay for them and how much they want to pay for themselves.
David Brooks invoked this article in his NYT Op-Ed today suggesting that Obama read it before his speech Wednesday: