{Spam?} Obama administration seeks right-wing consensus on health care

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In run-up to address to Congress
Obama administration seeks right-wing consensus on health care
By Alex Lantier
7 September 2009

As polls show mounting popular distrust of Obama’s reactionary health
care proposals in the run-up to his September 9 address to Congress on
health care, the administration is trying to secure right-wing support
for its agenda.

White House officials on Sunday talk shows repeatedly signaled they
would be willing to abandon plans for a public health insurance
scheme. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” senior Obama
administration advisor David Axelrod said that the so-called “public
option” is a “good tool,” adding, “It shouldn’t define the whole
health care debate, however.”

On ABC’s “This Week,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called the “public
option” a “valuable tool,” but refused to answer moderator George
Stephanopoulos’s question of whether the White House viewed it as
“essential.” Asked if Obama would veto legislation that did not
include a public option, Gibbs said, “I doubt we are going to get into
heavy veto threats” in Obama’s address to Congress.

Gibbs added that Obama has not “closed the doors on Republicans that
are ready, able and willing to work with the president to try to
provide a solution.”

According to the latest polls, 51 percent of the population now
distrusts Obama’s plans.

Congressional Democrats have split over whether to back a public
option. Until now, many House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
have indicated their opposition to a bill that would not include plans
for a public plan competing with private insurance companies. Speaking
for a coalition of Democratic House members—including the
Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific
American Caucus—Representative Barbara Lee told CNN, “All of our
caucuses are very unified about a robust public option.”

Powerful sections of the Democratic Party, notably in the conservative
“Blue Dog” wing of the party, oppose a public plan, however. Senator
Kent Conrad of North Dakota told CBS in August, “It is very clear that
in the United States Senate the public option does not have the
votes.” He maintained that Senate Democrats would need 60 votes to
pass health care reform, suggesting that Senate Democrats would refuse
to use so-called “reconciliation” procedures to avert a filibuster of
House health legislation by Senate Republicans.

While the different corporate interests involved have backed Obama’s
health care “reform,” certain provisions have engendered opposition.
In particular, the insurance industry has opposed the very limited
“public option” as a potential drain on the profit bonanza it is
anticipating.

The Obama administration is signaling an attempt to resolve these
divisions by ditching any limits on the profit prerogatives of the
health insurance industry. In July, Obama had said, “One of the best
ways to bring down costs, provide more choices and assure quality is a
public option that will force the insurance companies to compete and
keep them honest.” Apparently, this consideration no longer applies.

In the original House Democratic bill sponsored by Michigan
representative John Dingell (HR 3200) and posted in July, the public
scheme and private insurers would compete in government-supervised
“Health Care Exchanges” to provide a basic health-care package. This
basic package would provide a bargain-basement level of care while
imposing massive fees on those enrolled in its coverage.

HR 3200 specifies that “cost-sharing” by those enrolled in the basic
package can reach as high as “$5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for
a family. Such levels shall be increased (rounded to the nearest $100)
for each subsequent year” in line with inflation, as measured by the
consumer price index.

If enacted, such “cost-sharing” would put health coverage beyond the
reach of tens of millions of working-class people and families.

Complicit in the attack on workers’ access to health care and unable
to admit the social content of the measures they themselves are
proposing, Democrats have no basis on which to oppose Republican
criticism of their plans. Obama’s own explanations—noting that
end-of-life coverage was expensive and that insurers would have to
make tough decisions on what treatments to extend to the elderly—have
only deepened legitimate popular suspicions of his plans.

Democrats’ proposals for how to fund the public plan are similarly
regressive. One included a tax increase focused on the “middle class,”
leaving untouched the super-rich—the fundamental constituency of the
two big-business parties. Current plans supported by Democratic
Senator Max Baucus include finding tens of billions of dollars of
“savings” by imposing cuts on Medicare, the federally run medical
program for the elderly.

As a result, the Republican Party has been able to masquerade as a
defender of US health care, and the reaction of the Obama
administration has been to seek to accommodate the Republicans. Last
month, the Obama administration suggested it would seek “bipartisan”
legislation to attract Republican support. At that time, Health and
Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gave the first indication
that the public plan might not be “essential.”

The hypocrisy and cowardice of the public option’s supporters was on
display in the New York Times’ editorial Sunday, “President Obama’s
Health Choices.” The Times said Obama’s address Wednesday was “the
moment for him to stand tough for a large and comprehensive plan.”

In an admission of the huge political tensions developing in the US,
the Times explained that it viewed the public plan as essential to
defusing public opposition: “Scaling down too far would most likely
result in subsidies too limited to really help people. Imagine the
backlash if millions of Americans were required to carry insurance and
found they could not afford to buy it.”

The Times’ alleged concerns over health care availability were
fictional, however: it did not explain why it was not opposing
Democratic proposals that would also make health care unaffordable for
masses of people.

The Times also made clear that for it, the question of a public option
was subordinate to the paramount consideration: limiting health care
spending. It wrote, “Despite calls from Republicans that he jettison
support for a new public plan to compete with private plans on
[government-run health] exchanges, he should not do so now. If he
decides to bargain them away later, he should insist, minimally, that
a strong public plan be introduced if private insurers fail to hold
costs down in the future.”

With such absurd presentations of the Obama administration as battling
to ensure health care coverage, the Times is helping promote the lie
that the Obama administration’s climbdown reflects popular opposition
to extending health coverage. These lies will then be used to claim
that health care cuts have popular support, once they run into
opposition in the working class.

In fact, growing popular opposition to Obama’s health policies is one
reflection of people’s hostility to the overall policies of the Obama
administration and the Democratic Party. The fact that this opposition
has politically benefited the Republicans testifies above all to the
disenfranchisement of the working class enforced by the two-party
system in the US.

Elected on promises of “change,” and mass popular anger at the
capitalist breakdown and aggressive wars overseen by the preceding
Bush administration, the Obama administration has proven to be a cover
for continuing the Bush administration’s policies. Abroad, the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan continue. At home, after handing over hundreds of
billions of dollars to Wall Street banks, Obama supervised the
bankruptcy of the auto companies and the slashing of health care
benefits for auto retirees.

Auto retirees not affiliated with the United Auto Workers union saw
their medical coverage eliminated. UAW retirees will suffer cuts due
to the insufficient funding of the Voluntary Employee Beneficiary
Association set up to pay for their health care through ownership of a
auto companies’ stock.

Obama administration plans for national health care “reform” are of a
piece with its brutal treatment of the auto workers.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/heal-s07.shtml

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