What is President Obama's Health Care Reform Plan?
Wednesday, September 09, 2009SUSIE GHARIB: President Obama spells out his vision for health care reform tonight. He will deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress to explain the need to overhaul the nation's health care system. His address comes after weeks of rowdy town hall meetings all across the country where American voters spoke out against reform. Washington bureau chief Darren Gersh joins us now with more on what to expect from the president. Darren.
DARREN GERSH, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Hey Susie. Well the president plans to take the health care debate back to basics in his speech tonight. The president's goal tonight is to remind Americans confused by the debate so far of the key reasons he is pushing for health care reform. Topping the list is extending coverage, says White House adviser Melody Barnes.
MELODY BARNES, DIR., WHITE HOUSE DOMESTIC POLICY COUNCIL: We know that 14,000 people a day are losing their coverage and he wants not one more American to be among them. Secondly, that for those who don't have coverage right now, he wants to make sure that they can afford it. And thirdly, he also wants to make sure that we are in a trajectory to drive down the cost of health care in our system right now.
GERSH: Barnes says the president still favors a so-called public option as an effective way to control costs. But Max Baucus, the chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee and the point man on bipartisan negotiations, says that idea is going nowhere.
SEN. MAX BAUCUS, CHAIRMAN, SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE: I think, frankly, with increasing conviction that a public option cannot pass the Senate.
GERSH: Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell say the American people have come to the same conclusion.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, MINORITY LEADER: Our view is, let's scale it back, target the problems and not have the government take over, in effect, all of American health care.
GERSH: The president is now caught between two wings of his party, with liberal Democrats like Barbara Lee arguing only the government bargaining power backing a public plan can bring down health care costs.
REP. BARBARA LEE (D) CALIFORNIA: Without fixing the entire system, we would just be tinkering around the edges of a broken system, applying a Band-Aid where full resuscitation is what is required.
GERSH: As a compromise, Barnes says the president will address the idea of a trigger mechanism to create a public option if the private sector fails to control health care costs.
BARNES: It goes to this idea of competition and choice. As you were saying, you'll see the trigger will trigger a public option only if you aren't finding the requisite amount of competition in a particular state or a particular marketplace.
GERSH: Former Clinton adviser Bill Galston says Obama tonight will try to keep faith with his Democratic base, while also stressing that doing nothing is not an option.
BILL GALSTON, SENIOR FELLOW, BROOKINGS: He's sent every credible signal I can think of that if a bill comes to his desk without a public plan, but that enhances coverage and does some other things on the cost side, he'll sign it.
GERSH: The White House has released portions of the speech and the president will say the time for bickering is over and now is the time for action. Many of the analysts I spoke to expect some kind of reform, but they say the odds of this sweeping trillion dollar plan are down to 20 percent or so Susie.
GHARIB: So Darren, if it's not going be this big expansive plan, what will reform eventually look like if it does go through?
GERSH: A good bet is it might look like something like what they did in Massachusetts. So it might have an employer and an individual mandate that you have to buy insurance. But it will also have insurance market reforms that will mean that pre-existing conditions are no longer something people have to worry about. And it might also have subsidies to help people who can't afford insurance to be able to buy it.
GHARIB: So how much do you think that those town hall meetings had on reshaping this process?
GERSH: They got a lot of attention, didn't they? It really depends on who you ask. If you ask Republicans, they say that the people have spoken. They don't like a big government plan and that's what the town hall meeting showed. Democrats would say that basically what this showed is that people are confused about health care and that the president has to come here tonight and explain what this is all about.
GHARIB: So then what happens next? The president gives his speech tonight, congressional leaders go back to their constituents. What's next in the process?
GERSH: Well, we're going to hear from this bipartisan group, as you heard in the piece that I did. Max Baucus who is the chairman of the Finance Committee has been working with them for months. They've been locked in a room trying to come up with a deal. We'll know in the next week or so exactly what that deal is and how many of these Republican senators are on board. Then we'll see that work through the process in the Senate Finance Committee. Then it will go through the usual process of the Senate doing their work, the House doing their work. And we'll see where we end up.
GHARIB: We know about that process. It's a very long and arduous. Do you think that there will be a bill on the president's desk sometime this year?
GERSH: There will be a bill. It will be called health care reform. It depends on how you define that. Democrats can define it the way they want. You might have a small package of 100 to $200 billion. That's what's considered small in this debate. You might get the more $500 billion plan which would have the insurance market reforms, which have to be coupled with some kind of mandate that people buy it and some kind of subsidies in order to make the whole thing work. The odds of this trillion dollar package that we've heard so much about look like they're down to 20 percent is what I'm hearing from analysts who cover it very intensively.
GHARIB: All right, sounds like the debate continues and these next couple of weeks will be critical.
GERSH: Lots of fun.
GHARIB: Thank you for joining us, Washington bureau chief Darren Gersh.
