Associated Press: "Obama may need a firmer hand on health care debate"

[Better Believe It]

Obama may need firmer hand on health care debate
By CHARLES BABINGTON
Associated Press
June 21, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama is seeing the downside of his light touch on revamping the nation's health care system.

Congressional Democrats are off to a halting start, blindsided by a high cost estimate and divided over how to proceed. The confusion has emboldened Republican critics of the administration's approach to its top domestic priority.

Obama has given Congress leeway, trying to avoid the heavy-handed approach that helped doom a similar effort by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Obama recently told a Wisconsin crowd that he would not run roughshod over lawmakers with a "my way or the highway" approach.

But the lack of firm guidance from the president may have contributed to an unsteady launch by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The committee rolled out an incomplete bill in an effort to get action started and to show Republicans that Democrats had not made up their minds on every issue.

The strategy seemed to backfire when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the plan would cost $1 trillion over 10 years but cover only about one-third of those now lacking health insurance.

Democrats protested that the estimate overlooked important money-savers to be added later. But Republicans seized on the costly projection and the bill's half-finished nature, throwing Democratic leaders on the defensive.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration is willing to accept committee changes, such as trimming federal benefits or cutting proposed subsidies for health coverage.

"These are exactly the types of trade-offs and decisions that are going to have to be made throughout this process," Gibbs told reporters Friday.

"There will come a time, particularly on health care, when the president's active member-by-member lobbying will have its place, but it's too early at this point," said John Podesta, who headed Obama's transition team and presides over the Center for American Progress.

Presidential adviser David Axelrod defended Obama's decision to let Congress work its way through the process rather than "delivering stone tablets" with directives from the White House.

Please read the complete article at:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hITfom2rwHxvzXH9fMrN4pOUGrqQD98UPV2G0

[Vinca]

1. They'd better start chiseling the tablets.

[TomCADem]

2. Looks Like Diane Feinstein Is Opposing Any Public Option

You have to protect all those jobs in the insurance industry after all I guess. She should have some guts and support it, rather than being passive about not having the votes, then expressing "concern" about costs. Is she for a public option or not? If so, then fix the problems, and support a public option. Is that really that difficult?

Heck, Barbara Boxer, her fellow CA senator has come out in support of a public option, as has Nancy Pelosi, so there is no reason why a public option cannot be fairly implemented as to California.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/health/policy/22healthcare.html?hp

[msongs]

3. bipartisan = republicans will "run roughshod over things" ... nt