Health Care Reform 2009 Style

When it comes to health care reform 2009 has been an interesting year. And while comprehensive health care reform legislation will not be arriving on President Barack Obama’s desk this year, it is all but certain that will happen early in 2010. Getting to this penultimate moment has, to put it mildly, taken some doing. And the process says a lot about America and its leaders.

Health Care Reform Activity

President Obama had made clear throughout his campaign for the presidency that health care reform would be a top priority of his new administration. He lost no time making his promise real after his inauguration. Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Plan, a proposal twice vetoed by then President George Bush, along with significant funding for medical technology, were a part of Administration’s economic stimulus package.

President Obama’s health care reform efforts took a serious blow in February when former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was forced to withdraw his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services and as Director of the White House Office on Health Reform due to problems with his past tax returns. Senator Daschle is a political pragmatist who is highly regarded by lawmakers from both parties. Would the health care reform debate have been more civil had Senator Daschle led the White House reform effort? We’ll never know. What we do know is that civility quickly left the room as the House and Senate Committees with jurisdiction on the matter began their deliberations. The health care reform debate was passionate, raucous and partisan to the extreme. Neither party and no ideology is blameless for this descent into the dark side of politics. Both have benefited from it (although none as much as the 24 hour cable news channels) and both have sullied their standing with the public as a result.

Given what’s at stake when 1/6th of the nation’s economy is subjected to the legislative process, there may have been no avoiding an ugly health care reform debate. President Obama made clear in a speech in February that he wanted health care reform passed quickly. Many Republicans (and their talk show host allies) made it clear they’d rather see no health care reform rather than anything along the lines being proposed by – or that would politically benefit – President Obama. Meanwhile, the House Ways and Means, House Education and Labor and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committees pushed through liberal bills; anchors on the left in anticipation of the negotiations to follow. The resulting climate promoted intense partisanship.

Eventually more conservative Democrats forced the House Energy and Commerce Committee to slow done and moderate the legislation, although what they passed would still be considered “liberal” by most definitions.  All the House bills passed out of the committees without a single Republican vote. Meanwhile Senator Max Baucus was trying to fashion legislation that might gain the support of at least three GOP members of the Senate Finance Committee. (He would eventually manage to get the support of only one GOP Senator).

The difficulty of finding common ground between liberals and conservatives on health care reform was made abundantly clear during the summer of 2009. The disruption of lawmaker’s town hall meetings were reminiscent of the anti-Viet Nam War protests of the 1960’s. (I suppose it’s ironic that many of those shutting down the town hall meetings had participated in the anti-war protests more than 40 years earlier). The passion and concern of the health care reform protests were as sincere as some of the rhetoric and actions were unfortunate and despicable (death threats and swastikas are inherently contemptible and disgraceful). The protests did assure, however, that Republicans would remain united against the kind of reforms being pushed by the Administration.

Reform was being pushed by the White House even if the Administration was declining to define reform. Instead the White House broadly described the key elements they’d like to see in a reform bill. President Obama’s three core principles for health care reform called for reducing costs, guaranteeing choice and ensuring quality care for all. He would later add other conditions (e.g., reform could not add to the deficit), but the details of the bill were being hashed out in Congress by Democratic lawmakers. The result, much to the chagrin of liberals, was that over time the legislation became increasingly moderate culminating in the legislation passed out of the Senate Finance Committee with the support of only one Republican, Senator Olympia Snowe.

With all the committees of jurisdiction having staked out their positions it was time for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull together the pieces into bills that could pass their respective chambers. Speaker Pelosi succeeded first with the House passing a health care reform in November. The price of passage was high: liberals had to accept language dealing with abortions that sparked outrage in the pro-choice community.  It took the Senate more than a month to follow suit, but eventually they did. Now it’s up to a conference committee to pull the pieces together into one bill that can pass both the House and the Senate. Not an easy task, but with the finish line in sight it’s very doubtful lawmakers will falter now.

The Public Policy Dimension

While the activity swirling around health care reform has been … interesting, the evolution of the substance of the legislation has been even more fascinating. Not all that long ago liberal lawmakers were claiming a health care reform bill lacking a government-run health plan was no health care reform at all. They seemed to believe that a public health plan was the magic wand that would remake America’s health care system into something fair, competitive and wonderful. Or maybe they just thought the public option was a way station on the path to their promised land: a single payer system. While the House bill would create a new government health plan, the Senate legislation rejected the public option. While liberals outside of Congress continue to attack reform without a public option, liberals lawmakers seem to accept the inevitable. What emerges from the conference committee will no doubt lack a public option and liberal lawmakers will still support the reform package.

While liberals were losing a public option an unlikely coalition of conservatives and liberals were also watering down a requirement that all Americans purchase coverage. Conservatives dislike the idea as a restriction on the freedom of people to have their health care reform subsidized by higher health insurance premiums for everyone else. Liberals don’t like it because, apparently, the result is a windfall for evil health insurance companies. (OK, they offer more substantive public policy arguments against the individual mandate, but the rhetoric focuses on freedom and windfalls). Never mind that requiring health plans to sell coverage without requiring individuals to buy coverage before they incur claims is a recipe for higher insurance costs or that many states require drivers to buy auto insurance. As the legislation has moved through Congress the penalty for failing to purchase coverage has drifted toward a slap on the wrist end of the spectrum.

Other issues have taken interesting turns as well. Reimbursing doctors for counseling to seniors concerning living wills and the like was removed from the bill once the discussions were labeled “death panels.” What taxes will be imposed to pay for health care reform is still uncertain. Anti-abortion advocates have done a masterful job of inserting abortion into the debate. Both the House and Senate bills contained provisions that could “bend the cost curve” (which is apparently the new articulation of what was once called cost containment). If all the cost cutting provisions in the current bills were moved into separate legislation it would actually look like a serious effort. Mixed in with the health insurance reform dominating the current versions, however, the provisions appear weak and almost an afterthought.

Health Care Reform 2009: The Human Factor

So what to make of health care reform 2009 style?

First, that the legislative process is messy and can be downright uninspiring. Second, that tackling an issue as important and complicated as health care reform cannot overcome the need for partisans of both parties to put aside the public good for their political stratagems. Third, that the health care reform package that finally passes will be far more moderate than might have been apparent earlier this year. Fourth, criticism that Congress is moving too fast on reform are really complaints that Congress is not doing what critics leveling this charge want them to do. The health care reform bill that will find its way to President Obama’s desk in 2010 will be over a year in the making. Longer if you count the debate on health care held during the 2008 presidential election. Longer still if you include the previous health care reform efforts undertaken over the past several decades.

We elect politicians to hold office because they promise to address problems. No one has ever won a campaign on the promise to do nothing if elected. In 2008 Democrats won, and won handily, in part on a promise to solve the problems posed by America’s current health care system. They are fulfilling that promise. In the process they will create new problems.

Because the fact is we humans rarely solve problems. Instead we tend to replace existing problems with new ones. And if the 2009 health care reform process has taught us anything, it’s that the people who make up the Administration and Congress (and the general public) are only human. Anyone looking at the health care reform package emerging from Congress would find evidence of that reality.

House Health Care Reform Bill: Some Varied Perspectives

One person’s socialism is another’s sellout. At least that’s the way it seems to go when it comes to health care reform. And it certainly must appear that way to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who today unveiled the Affordable Health Care for America Act. HR 3926 blends together provisions from the three House Committees that have produced health care reform legislation: the Ways & Means Committee; the Education & Labor Committee; and the Energy & Commerce Committee. The result is not as liberal as some on the left called for and is too radical for those on the right.

As CBS News reported, those on the left are upset that the bill would create a government-run insurance plan that would be required to negotiate rates with providers much as private carriers do. This angers liberals who want the public health plan to set rates that providers would have to accept, much as is done with Medicare and Medicaid.

Meanwhile, back on the Hill, conservatives attacked the House health care reform bill in no uncertain terms. “It will raise the cost of Americans’ health insurance premiums; it will kill jobs with tax hikes and new mandates, and it will cut seniors’ Medicare benefits,” proclaimed House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Is it socialism? A sellout? A good idea or a bad idea? Most readers of this blog can guess my answers (for those interested, my view of it is at the end of this post). Here’s how others are discussing the legislation:

The National Underwriter does a great job of identifying where some of the controversial provisions in the bill can be found. While the publication is a bit too fixated with the number of pages in the House health care reform bill (1,990), it’s still a good starting point for understanding the legislation. And it points out that the bill does nothing to prevent brokers to sell products within the Exchange, so it offers a bit of a reassuring start, too.

The Congressional Budget Office is highly regarded by lawmakers on both side of the partisan divide for its objective analysis of the budget impact of legislation– unless, of course, they don’t like the analysis. The CBO’s analysis of HR 3926 indicates it will reduce the deficit over the next 10 years by $104 billion, insure 96 percent of non-elderly legal residents in the country (18 million people).  The CBO’s director, Douglas Elmendorf, maintains a blog and summarizes the analysis in his post today. he notes that the findings of the CBO are “subject to substantial uncertainty.”

The Christian Science Monitor’s story reports on the how the liberals may call for a floor vote on a more robust public option than is in the bill in order to put Democratic and Republican members on record as to where they stand on a government-run health plan.

The Associated Press focuses on the CBO’s conclusion that the public option might actually cost consumers more than private coverage. It also notes that while Speaker Pelosi compromised on the powers of the government-run health plan to appease the more moderate members of her caucus, many of those moderates remain concerned about the overall cost.

A BusinessWeek article zeroes in on some of the taxes the House health care reform legislation would impose and how they differ from the taxes likely to be in the Senate reform bill.

Reimbursing doctors for providing end-of-life counseling remains in the House health care reform bill. Given that some conservatives described this provision as creating “death panels,” preserving this element of the bill can be viewed as an act of political courage. As I’ve posted before, the death panel claim was more of a cruel hoax on the American people than an insightful read of the legislation. But the passions and paranoia surrounding the provision was so vociferous, the easy course would have been to simply drop it from the bill – as was done in the Senate. The Oregon Congressman, Earl Blumeauer, who championed inclusion of the counseling provision in the health care reform package, says he was motivated by a talk with a Southern Minister who told him ‘It’s very important for those of us in the clergy that this provision be kept, cos’ we see situations where families don’t get the help they need, and we have to try to counsel them through.”

For those interested in reading the bill, here’s a link to HR 3926 – the Affordable Health Care for America Act. As noted, it’s 1990 pages, but there’s a lot of white space on most of the pages.

My take on the House health care reform bill is that it’s not socialism nor a sellout. It is a politically necessary step down a long road. As regular blog reader Alison noted in her comment on an earlier post concerning Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s efforts to forge health care reform legislation that can muster 60 votes in the Senate, “… if you start off extreme then there is more room for negotiation to where he (Senator Reid) most likely anticipates its going anyway. If you give away the farm at first you have nothing left in your hand to negotiate with. I do not believe he anticipated this to fly at all but rather offers it as a calculated starting point.”

Alison’s point applies equally as well to Speaker Pelosi’s health care reform bill.

Health care reform is a process. First there was the pre-legislation discussion of what health care reform should do. Then there were the debates in various committees in which those intentions were put into bill form. Now the leadership of each chamber are blending the work of their committees into single bills. Next will come a conference committee tasked with combining the two bills that emerge from the Senate and the House of Representatives into a single bill. At each step along the way positions harden, the rhetoric (hard to believe it’s possible) becomes even more shrill, and the compromises more plentiful. But at each stage, the final legislation becomes more clear. After all, if the House Leadership is going to push moderate Democrats to vote for a public option of any kind, a vote those moderates will need to defend at election time, they must believe it is going to be a part of the final reform package. (At least those moderate Democrats hope so).

The Affordable Health Care for America Act will look more like whatever finally emerges from Congress than the bills passed by the three House Committees. But it’s not the last word. The blended Senate bill has been described, but not seen. Both the House and Senate proposals will be evolve. We’re several weeks away from seeing the legislation that will emerge from the conference committee.

The worthiness of the result, as always, will be in the eye of the beholder.

It’s Time for President Obama to Define Health Care Reform

Now comes the fun part. With the Senate Finance Committee poised to pass its version of comprehensive health care reform we get to one of the more difficult segments of the Kabuki dance: Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid must now reconcile the bills passed by multiple committees into a blended proposal. Which means the time is right for President Barack Obama to publicly define what, exactly, is “Obamacare”.

First some background. In the House, different versions of health care reform legislation have been passed by the House Ways & Means, Energy & Commerce, and Education & Labor committees. To be more precise, while the legislation moved forward by Ways & Means and Education & Labor were very similar, moderate Democratic members on the Energy & Commerce committee gained significant changes in that committee’s version. Speaker Pelosi will now combine the three versions into a “Manger’s Bill.” This is the version that will be debated and voted upon by the full House.

What’s makes Speaker Pelosi’s mash-up of the House Committee’s health care reform bills important is that any changes must be imposed upon it. Her version of the bill is the “default” position. From a legislative process perspective, this puts those seeking changes to the legislative language at a disadvantage.

The same blending process is underway in the Senate. There the task is even harder. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed a liberal version of health care reform; the Senate Finance Committee’s plan is much more moderate. The gap between them is far greater than that between the three House committee’s bills. The Associated Press describes Senator Reid’s efforts to blend two disparate health care reform bills as “mission seemingly impossible.” Given the differences in the how the two Committees addressed costs, taxes, whether there should be a government-run plan, the obligation of employers to provide coverage and other controversial items, “seemingly impossible” may be an understatement.

Unless President Obama dives deeper into the details than has publicly been the case. The White House has been engaged in Congressional health care reform negotiations for some time. According to news reports, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, formerly part of the House Leadership, has been the Administration’s point person in these discussions. Until recently, President Obama has been willing to let Congress thrash out the thorny issues related to health care reform, setting forth broad principles. Beginning last month the president has offered more specifics, but hardly enough to clearly define what his version of health care reform looks like. At least not publicly.

With all the Congressional committees having taken a position, the time has come to get specific. Yes, the White House could leave it to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to fashion compromises that can pass their respective chambers, but that only postpones the Administration’s day of reckoning. For after the House and Senate passes their differing versions of reform, a conference committee (made up of both Senators and Representatives) will convene to fashion the final bill. If President Obama waits until the conference committee convenes to publicly engage in the nitty-gritty of reform, it could be too late. Legislators will have been forced to make numerous politically challenging votes. The political payback if the White House then makes those votes unnecessary would be … ugly.

President Obama needs to make his health care reform vision known now, before those votes. He needs to say “this is acceptable;” “this is not.”  He needs to spend his political capital to define Obamacare, to give lawmakers the cover they need to make tough votes, and to rally his considerable grassroots organization behind specific legislation.

Publicly defining what he wants in the bill is a huge political risk for President Obama. His positions will anger some supporters and give opponents mounds of ammunition to use against him. Whatever changes Congress makes to the president’s reform plan will be described by the jabbering cable network pundits as a defeat for the Administration. If he accepts those changes he’ll be accused of weakness and flip-flopping. (One of the most insightful columnists around, Richard Reeves recently explained the value and wisdom of political leaders capable of changing their minds).

But the greater risk to the Administration is failing to achieve meaningful health care reform. And if health care reform does pass, the messiness of the process will be soon forgotten. The odds of President Obama getting a health care reform bill sent to his desk increases exponentially if Congress – and the public – have a clear understanding of the Administration’s legislative ambitions.

The policy and political pieces are all on the table. Selecting from among the various provisions contained in the five variations of health care reform passed by Congressional committees won’t be an easy, but it is necessary. President Obama wanted Congress to participate in the reform process. They have. Now it’s his turn.

Progressives Will Face Tough Health Care Reform Choice

Just looking at the broad facts, liberals should be riding high. President Barack Obama occupies the White House. Democrats hold a 60-40 super-majority in the U.S. Senate and a commanding 256-178 majority in the House (with one more on the way after a special election in California later this year). Republicans are on an electoral losing streak of epic proportions and have yet to find a unified voice. It doesn’t get much better than this.

Except appearances can be deceiving and liberals will soon need to decide whether they are willing to vote for a bill that, in their view, improves America’s health care system but does not go nearly far enough or should they leave the system the way it is.

Note: This post was updated on July 30th to provide more details concerning the House Energy & Commerce Committee compromise and liberals reaction to it. Additions are presented in italics.

The evolution of health care reform legislation as it moves through Congress must frustrate progressives. It started off to their liking. Senator Edward Kennedy’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee pushed forward a bill that satisfied much of the liberal wish list. Good times continued when the House Ways & Means and the Education & Labor Committees passed equally progressive bills. That the affirmative votes on all three committee came exclusively from Democrats was not of great concern to supporters. Health care reform was coming whether Republicans wanted to join the parade or not.

Liberals were on a role, but then their moderate and conservative colleagues began to make their presence felt. And there are more of them than is generally acknowledged. While conservative talk show hosts like to brand the Democrats as a monolithic subsidiary of Mao-spouting communists, the reality is far different (actually, reality is usually different than that described by conservative talk show hosts, but that’s a topic for another day).  A party does not capture 60 percent of the Senate and 59 percent of the House by running cookie cutter candidates all pledged to the same ideology. The country is too diverse. The brilliance of Rahm Emanuel, then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and now White House Chief of Staff, was that he discarded virtually the entire Democratic litmus test in his search for candidates. The only significant requirement he demanded of the candidates he recruited was that, once elected, they would vote for a Democrat for Speaker of the House. Meanwhile, the GOP who hewed closely to the beliefs and principles of their base. Moderates were scorned and labeled RINOs (Republicans in Name Only). They succeeded in recruiting ideologues who had no chance of winning outside the reddest of red districts.

Consequently, the Democratic caucus is chock full of moderates and even conservatives.  Which all but guarantees that liberals will be disappointed. There are simply not enough liberals in Congress to pass a bill without support from moderates.

So it should not have been a surprise when problems developed as the progressive juggernaut moved beyond some of the most liberal committees in Congress. The Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate Democrats in the House, objected to a host of provisions in the Ways & Means and Education & Labor bills. While they lacked the votes to hold up the legislation in those committees, they did such leverage in the the House Energy & Commerce Committee. The Blue Dog Democrats had an agenda for health care reform that differed in many respects from that of their more liberal colleagues.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee were working tirelessly to hash out a health care reform package that could garner bi-partisan support. To get there, Senator Max Baucus, Chair of the committee, was willing to jettison some of the more treasured elements of the liberal health care reform agenda.

Both the Blue Dog Democrats and the moderates on the Senate Finance Committee are making substantial progress. House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Henry Waxman and Representative Mike Ross, speaking on behalf of the Blue Dogs, announced an agreement that will allow the full committee to begin marking up health care reform legislation. The specific changes to the bill from the versions passed by the Ways & Means and Education & Labor Committees are not yet public. But there are four major elements according to wire stories:

• Keeping the 10-hear cost below $1 trillion by agreeing to $100 billion in cuts
• Preventing a public plan from simply imposing Medicaid rates by allowing physiicans and other medical providers to negoiate rates with the government plan
• Exempting businesses with payrolls below $500,000 (86 percent of all small businesses)  from any government mandates requiring them to provide health insurance to their employees
• Postponing a full House vote on health care reform until after September 8th

At the same time, Senator Baucus and the ranking minority member of the committee, Senator Chuck Grassley, are making it known they are close to unveiling the Senate Finance Committee’s compromise. Their proposal is unlikely to include a government-run health plan. It may not include all the mandates and subsidies liberals seek. In short, they will reform the health care system, but leave much of what exists in place. Which puts progressives in an uncomfortable position.

Moderates and conservatives seem willing to defeat any health care reform legislation rather than vote for the kind of reforms liberals seek. Will liberals refuse to support legislation that does not go as far as they demand? As of now they are threatening to do just that. The Progressive Caucus is circulating a letter seeking 50 signatures (enough to defeat any bill) pledging to kill any legislation failing to contain a strong public plan.

That’s not yet known. That the compromise proposals will be attacked from both the left and the right is to be expected. And liberals are already expressing outrage at having their wishes denied. For example, the Associated Press quotes Representative Lynn Woolsey  as saying “They can’t possibly be taking us seriously if they’re going to bring this [compromise legislation] forward.”

But will liberals insist on getting their way even if it means letting the status quo stand?

Ideology and pragmatism are often hard to reconcile, but my prediction is that liberals will vote for moderate health care reform. The reason: Senator Kennedy and President Obama will eventually accept a compromise. Throughout his career Senator Kennedy has demonstrated the political wisdom of taking half a loaf now and continuing the fight for the rest another day. And, according to the Associated Press story cited above, the White House is already making clear the Administration is willing to settle for a more moderate bill.

With Senator Kennedy and President Obama’s urging, enough liberals will accept that even modest reform is preferable to the status quo. They won’t be happy with what it contains, or more accurately, what it doesn’t contain, but they will be among those applauding when President Obama signs the bill into law this Fall.

Added 9:05 pm July 29, 2009: As noted above, liberals are upset over any compromise that does not include a public health insurance plan. In a post on Politico.com, Glenn Thrush reports that “Two months ago, most of the 80-plus members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus signed a pledge that they would oppose any health care bill that didn’t contain a bona fide public option that would compete with private insurers. On Wednesday, they seemed willing to stick to their promise.”  He goes on to quote Representative Barney Frank as saying liberals might reject the House leadership’s  request to support a weakened public option. “I don’t think it would pass the House — I wouldn’t vote for it,'” the post quotes Rep. Frank as saying.  No one would cheer louder than Republicans to see health care reform fail because moderate and liberal Democrats fail to come together. Which is, to repeat my prediction from above, why I think liberals will eventually take a deep breath, vote for a moderate bill, and come back in 2010 fighting for more.

More Health Care Reform Proposals Added to the Mix

So many health care reform proposals are flying around the nation’s capital it’s nearly time to bring in the air traffic controllers. There are draft bills, option papers, proposals, outlines, and about any other kind of document you can name whirling around like jets over O’Hare.

Michael Johnson of Blue Shield of California and I gave a presentation on health care reform Wednesday to a group of health insurance brokers. We were reading up on one of the latest ideas issued a few hours earlier literally minutes before the panel got underway. It’s only going to get worse as some stake out (somewhat extreme) negotiating positions while others offer up potential compromises.

Here’s some of the more recent health care reform proposals to be launched — or about to be:

1.  The web site The Hill is reporting that moderates in the House of Representatives from both sides of the aisle are meeting in private to fashioning a compromise package. Among those meeting are part of the GOP’s “Tuesday Group,” the New Democratic Coalition and the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition. Fearing retribution from party leaders, neither side is offering the names of participants. The meetings are significant not just because they are likely to produce yet another health care reform package. The negotiations also underscore the reality that while the media tends to portray both Democrats and Republicans as monolithic parties of extreme ideologies, there are a significant number of lawmakers who eschew the hardline ideology of their colleagues and search for pragmatic solutions.
2. Former Senate majority leaders unveiled a health care reform plan they hope will provide a middle ground in debate. The plan was developed by Republican former Senators Howard Baker and Bob Dole along with Democratic former Senators Tom Daschle and George Michell. (Former Senator Mitchell is credited by the Boston Globe with having contributed to the document, although it is signed by only Senators Baker, Daschle and Dole). It weaves around the middle on a number of issues, although it does lean to the left. For example, while the proposal does not call for a creation of a federal government-run health plan it would permit states to create them. It also calls for taxing the value of health plans an employee receives to the extent it exceeds the cost of coverage provided to members of Congress. According to the Boston Globe this would amount about $5,000 for an individual and $13, 000 for a family.
3. The House Republican leadership unveiled their health care reform plan on Wednesday, too. Among other features it would allow states, small businesses and other group to come together into “pools” to offer low cost health plans that, at a minimum, is provided in a majoirty of states. It also would offer lower-income Americans refundable tax credits they could use to purchase coverage and would make individual health insurance premiums tax deductible. It does not require consumers to buy coverage, but the GOP plan would encourage states “to create a Universal Access Program by establishing and/or reforming existing programs to guarantee all Americans, regardless of pre-existing conditions or past illnesses … access to affordable coverage.” Development of the GOP plan was led by Representative Roy Blunt.
4. Last week the Chairs of the three House committees with jurisdiction on health care reform released a framework for reform. The Tri-Committee Health Reform Draft Proposal, put forward by House of Representative Chairs Charles Rangel of the Ways and Means Committee, Henry Waxman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and George Miller of the Education and Labor Committee outlines the key provisions of a unified Democratic reform package. The framework calls for creation of a government-run health plan to compete with private carriers, requires all Americans to obtain coverage (with exemptions in cases of financial hardship), requires most employers to either provide coverage or pay a fee, and provides subsidies for Americans households with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

There will be many more proposals coming soon. As it is relatively early in the legislative process, most will stake out relatively pure ideological positions. Neither party has an incentive to offer compromise solutions yet. So House Democrats, along with Senator Edward Kennedy and his Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, will anchor the left and the GOP Leadership and conservative Senators will anchor the right. As in most negotiations, the goal is to establish a starting position so far to one extreme or the other that the middle shifts in their direction.  

There will be some pragmatic proposals put forward as well. The most anticipated is that expected to be coming soon from the Senate Finance Committee. It’s Chair, Max Baucus, and its Ranking Member, Charles Grassley, seem to be sincere in their efforts to put forward a bi-partisan solution. In the meantime, President Barack Obama will keep up a drumbeat in support of getting comprehensive health care reform legislation through Congress before the end of the year. Although the White House continues to let Congress take the lead in fashioning the final reform package, the Obama Administration is beginning to get more engaged in the legislative process.

What the final health care reform legislation will look like is, as yet, unknown. It may resemble one of the ideas already put forward. Or perhaps something new to the mix will gain momentum. I’m betting that something will pass this year. The process of getting to one bill will be messy, but eventually, a consensus will form.

Not yet, but eventually.

Public Health Insurance Plan Compromise Likely When Time Is Right

The decibel level concerning whether health care reform should include a government-run health plan got a lot louder this week when President Barack Obama reiterated his strong support for the concept. Partisans on both sides of the issue ratcheted up their rhetoric several notches, drew pretty lines in the sand and retreated to reading doomsday passages from their partisan play books. Amid the clamor there were even reasonable, constructive policy discussions to be heard. All of this is to be expected. And while it can generate great anxiety among those who care about the issue, it’s important to keep things in perspective.

First, there’s no health care reform bill yet. Key House and Senate Committees are drafting them right now, but nothing “official” is on paper yet. For now everything we’re hearing comes from option papers, outlines and letters. The legislative process involves numerous steps. What people expect it legislation to look like doesn’t really matter all that much. In fact, what legislation looks like when it’s first introduced doesn’t mean all that much. It’s what the bill contains when it winds up on the President’s desk that matter. Until that version of the bill emerges, it’s all just part of the debate. 

Second, no one should be surprised that President Obama considers a government-run health plan to be important. He made his position clear during the campaign. Often. His position on the issue seems to be one of principle, not politics. He sincerely believes that, as he wrote in his letter to Senator Max Baucus and Senator Edward Kennedy, a public plan “… will give [consumers] a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.” You may disagree with his conclusion, but he has been consistent and specific about his intent.

Third, what President Obama wants from health care reform is critical. He’s a popular president advocating popular positions. The need for comprehensive health care reform is widely accepted. The President is an extremely skillful politician (just as Secretary of State Clinton and Senator John McCain). And ultimately, he’s the one who signs the bill or vetoes it. However, the White House is only one piece of the health care reform puzzle — a big piece, but still only one piece.  Congress will write the health care reform legislation. And Congress, by design, does it’s job messily. There are three House Committees (Energy &Commerce, Ways &Means, and Education & Labor) and two Senate Committees (Finance and Health, Education, Labor & Pensions) with jurisdiction. Within each chamber, the committee chairs have all pledged to cooperate and present a unified bill. That doesn’t mean they agree on everything, however. Getting to a common bill in either the House or Senate will require tremendous work and substantial give-and-take. And any unified bill within a Chamber is only the beginning. The House and Senate bills will need to be reconciled. 

Fourth, in the end, it all comes down to votes. Democrats have sizeable majorities in both chambers of Congress. That’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because the majority, eventually, tends to rule — or at least get most of what it wants. It’s a curse because getting to a large majority means creating a big tent. The Democratic political strategy for the past several years have been to recruit and strongly support candidates who fit their districts, not who meet some test of ideological purity. Which means there are liberals, moderates and conservatives on the Democratic side of the aisle in both the House and the Senate. This, in turn, means the White House and the Congressional Leadership must negotiate with members of their own party at the same time they are negotiating with the GOP.

What all this means is that what’s being said today about a government-run health insurance plan is significant, but not determinative of what will become law. President Obamamay want a public health plan. Leaders in Congress may wanta public health plan. But in the end, they want comprehensive health care reform more. And that means bringing along the moderate and conservative members of their caucus and, if possible, Republicans, too.

Some of those moderates have made clear they have problems with a government-run plan. Consider this report from Bloomberg entitled “Health ‘Public Option’ Hits Bipartisan Resistance:  “A group of House Democrats from Republican-leaning states said any “public option” must be tightly restricted so it doesn’t undermine private industry. We cannot create a public option that stacks the deck — through rate-setting and forced participation — against a system that currently provides coverage to 160 million Americans,” said Representative Mike Ross of Arkansas, chairman of the health-care task force of conservative “Blue Dog” House Democrats.”

Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Democrat, said this weekend that, while he is open to a public health insurance plan under some circumstance, “‘It’s a deal-breaker for me if there’s a government-run plan to replace existing insurance plans,” according to the Lincoln Journal Star. Other moderate and conservative Democratic Senators have expressed similar reservations or, like Senator Evan Bayh are, at this stage of the debate, “agnostic” about the value of a public plan.  He w3nt on to say that a public plan might be limited to serving as “a backstop, as a last resort, if the private sector has just failed to meet the challenge.”

Politics, it is often said, is the art of compromise. But it’s also a lot like poker and as the song goes, in that game you’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. The key word in that lyric is “when.”  When it comes to a government-run health insurance plan, then is not now. It’s too early for partisans on either side of the debate to compromise. That time will come soon enough. Who does the compromising will be determined the way it always has been: by whose vote is needed. Passage of comprehensive health care reform will require votes from members of the Blue Dog Coalition (House Democrats) and the Senate’s Moderate Dems Working Group. When it comes to fashioning a compromise, it’s the positions of these lawmakers that need to be closely watched.