The path to passing health care reform legislation is set now, regardless of President Obama's speech tonight. The only open question is what measures will be included in the bill that reaches the President's desk.
President Obama's speech will be aimed mainly at mollifying Democrats, some who have audaciously murmured recently about finding a liberal replacement for Blue-Dogish Obama in 2012. (For more, see Can Obama Presidency Survive Public Option Failure?)
My prediction is that, thankfully forced left by liberals into not forsaking his solemn campaign pledges, President Obama will argue for a Medicare-like (i.e. public) health coverage plan as one option among mulitple plans from which every citizen must select one. The purpose of a public plan option, of course, is to lend price competition to private insurers, thereby causing the cost of health care coverage to decrease.
However, Obama would happily sign legislation that excludes a public plan. Regardless of the President's late-in-the-game speech, health care reform legislation will inevitably proceed as follows:
- Step One - The House will pass a health care bill that includes a public plan option, because more than 80 progressive Democrats won't support legislation without it. Most Blue Dogs will vote against it, as they always planned to do.
- Step Two - The Senate will pass a confusing plan that melds some surprisingly good ideas from Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) with Democratic proposals, and includes a few suggestions from the horrifying, contributions-tainted mess led by Finance Committee Chair Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and five other senators who, together, represent less than 3% of American voters.
Most likely, the Senate version will pass via the "reconciliation" process which requires only 51 votes, but will include a few votes cast by Republican and centrist Democratic senators.
- Step Three - In the Conference Committee, the House and Senate health care reform bills are reconciled into one legislative package. This is where the most contentious political horse-trading takes place. And it won't be pretty for this bill.
I predict that the emerging bill will incorporate Sen. Snowe's smart, innovative plans for "a new government corporation (that) would offer health insurance in any states where affordable coverage was not readily and widely available from private insurers."
Under Sen. Snowe's plan, a public plan will be a contingency option in most states, set to "trigger" only if private insurance plans remain inordinately expensive. In states where affordable options are not widely available, a lower-cost public plan will be offered by this new government entity which is separate from the Executive branch, hence White House control.
- Step Four - The Conference Committee bill will be revoted on by Congress, then sent to the President for his signature. President Obama will sign any damn health care bill that reaches his desk, and will celebrate it as an historic victory for all Americans.
The President's much-ballyhooed speech will have little to no impact on the substance of health care reform legislation in 2009.
But it will have profound impact on how Barack Obama is regarded by his Democratic party base. And that, of course, is why he will act "fired up" in September 2009 about what he claimed during the campaign was the very cause of his life.
I can't predict the impact that brilliant rhetorician Barack Obama's speech tonight will have on liberals. But one thing is for sure: the Democratic party base is hungry for substantive, progressive actions, not just soaring words.
I pray that President Obama is a more effective advocate for other issues that he claimed to support during the presidential campaign.
- Essential Reading
- Obama Campaign Promises: Health Care
- Small-State U.S. Senators on the Take Eviscerate Health Care
- Can Obama Presidency Survive Public Option Failure?
(Photo taken on Sept 7, 209: Martin H. Simon/Getty Images)
Comments
So…. forcing people to get coverage is good… Setting up more government in states where it could just as easily allow insurance across state lines is good (i.e. ZERO cost)…
…remind me again how this is going to get paid for? Ah yes. Patriotic duty to pay more and more taxes at the high end… I forget… being selfish (wanting to KEEP my money) is worse than being greedy (you wanting to TAKE my money)…
the people have no voice in this government
Just happened to find this blog. Living in Europe – Swedish citizen I just heard about the opposition against president Obamaīs health care reform I just canīt help expressing myself. For me itīs really astonishing almost shocking that so many Americans are against the reform. Although many public sectors in Sweden nowadays have been privatized, the idea of abolishing public health care insurance care have never been discussed. There are both public and private medical care, but both of them are paid for by the public health insurance, which covers nearly all the costs. I donīt want to intervene in internal American matters, but just felt I had to react.
Sounds right to me.
I look for the finished product to be a watered-down version of all we have been hearing with enough Republican names to be advertised as “bipartisan” in much the same way (forgive the analogy) that Southerners claimed any record of Negro blood, no matter how little, was enough for anyone to be officially “Colored.” As you said a few posts back, the only thing Republicans hate worse than a Democrat proposal is one that succeeds, so that will be enough to insure Democrats don’t get all the credit.
I find the mandate issue amusing. One reason I favored Hillary Clinton early on was that her health care plan called for mandates and Obama’s was to be optional. Aside from that, all I heard was that their two plans were almost the same. (And with both sides advocating universal health care, the issue got little attention during the campaign.)
Somehow the president let Congress hatch the “mandates” bitter pill but as we saw last night he sensibly seized it as an essential part of any finished product.
That was smooth politics at its best.
Sadly, I expect the benefits of any reform, like those of Social Security and Medicare, will not show for a generation. Part of our heritage is often to vilify leaders while they live and recognize their virtues after they are dead, politically and/or clinically.
Just read my comment again. Noticed it needs some clarification. Of course the public health care insurance in Sweden includes sickness benifits when youīre at home not only when you go to the doctor or are in a hospital. I know that Hillary Clinton has visited Sweden some years ago when she was a senator to get information about the Swedish health care insurance.
Hope that the reform will be realized. Personaly there are many aspects of the American way of life that I admire, therefore itīs sad that U.S is the only remaining democratic country that still lacks a public health care reform.
I think the hundreds of thousands of people in DC this weekend would disagree.
http://www.examiner.com/x-16143-Richmond-Republican-Examiner~y2009m9d13-The-912-Project-Tea-Projec5t-March-on-Washington-Part-One-with-slideshow