Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care - NYTimes.com

Finally, President Obama is joining the debate on Health Care. Of course, Republicans don't want a Public option, and just want the for profit companies to be able to hold on to their 30% administrative costs, the health and solvency of the people in this country don't matter to them.

Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care - NYTimes.com
Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: June 6, 2009
WASHINGTON — After months of insisting he would leave the details to Congress, President Obama has concluded that he must exert greater control over the health care debate and is preparing an intense push for legislation that will include speeches, town-hall-style meetings and much deeper engagement with lawmakers, senior White House officials say.

Mindful of the failures of former President Bill Clinton, whose intricate proposal for universal care collapsed on Capitol Hill 15 years ago, Mr. Obama until now had charted a different course, setting forth broad principles and concentrating on bringing disparate factions — doctors, insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, labor unions — to the negotiating table.
But Mr. Obama has grown concerned that he is losing the debate over certain policy prescriptions he favors, like a government-run insurance plan to compete with the private sector, said one Democrat familiar with his thinking. With Congress beginning a burst of work on the measure, top advisers say, the president is determined to make certain the final bill bears his stamp.
“Ultimately, as happened with the recovery act, it will become President Obama’s plan,” the White House budget director, Peter R. Orszag, said in an interview. “I think you will see that evolution occurring over the next few weeks. We will be weighing in more definitively, and you will see him out there.”
On Saturday, while Mr. Obama was traveling in Europe, he used his weekly radio and Internet address to make the case that “the status quo is broken” and to set forth his ambitious goals.
Broadly speaking, he wants to extend coverage to the 45 million uninsured while lowering costs, improving quality and preserving consumer choice. His budget includes what he called a “historic down payment” of $634 billion over 10 years, accomplished mostly by slowing Medicare growth and limiting tax breaks for those with high incomes.
“We must attack the root causes of skyrocketing health costs,” Mr. Obama said, pointing to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and other institutions as among those that offer high-quality care at low cost. “We should learn from their successes and promote the best practices, not the most expensive ones. That’s how we’ll achieve reform that fixes what doesn’t work and builds on what does.”
The radio address was the start of a public relations campaign coinciding with a 50-state grass-roots effort that Organizing for America, the president’s political group, began Saturday to promote a health care overhaul. His hope is to provide what his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, called “air cover” for lawmakers to adopt his priorities. It is a gamble by the White House that Mr. Obama can translate his approval ratings into legislative action.
“Obviously,” Mr. Emanuel said, “the president’s adoption of something makes it easier to vote for, because he’s — let’s be honest — popular, and the public trusts him.”
But as Mr. Obama wades into the details of the legislative debate — a process that began last week when he released a letter staking out certain specific policy positions for the first time — he will face increasingly difficult choices and risks.
Aides say he will not dictate the fine print. “It was never his intent to come to Congress with stone tablets,“ said his senior adviser, David Axelrod. But he will increasingly make his preferences known.
If he embraces a tax on employee benefits, an idea he attacked when he was running for president, he may infuriate labor and the middle class. If he insists on a big-government plan in the image of Medicare, he could lose any hope of Republican support and ignite an insurance industry backlash. If he does not come up with credible ways to pay for his plan, which by some estimates could cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years, moderate Democrats could balk.
Many Republicans are already angry over the emphasis Mr. Obama placed on the public plan in last week’s letter. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said Friday that “the key to a bipartisan bill is not to have a government plan in the bill.”....More at link above