Obama to Forge a Greater Role on Health Care
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT
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.”
(More here.)
Here's a related article from the NYT Magazine:
Taking the Hill
By MATT BAI
Sometime in the next few weeks, Congress and the White House will descend into the labyrinthine politics of comprehensive health care reform. For Barack Obama, this signals the end, in a sense, of the eventful prologue to his presidency. Impressive as they are, Obama’s legislative victories to this point — most notably the $787 billion stimulus bill and a stunningly ambitious $3.6 trillion budget resolution — have been relatively easy lifts for a popular new president installed at a time of economic crisis and buffered by comfortable majorities in the House and Senate. Sure, getting those bills passed required a fair amount of perseverance on the part of the White House, but persuading congressmen to spend public money in their districts doesn’t exactly qualify as dark magic. Designing a new health care system, on the other hand, is a legislative goal that has eluded every Democratic president since Harry Truman and that Obama repeatedly vowed to accomplish during last year’s campaign; he has said that it is not only a moral imperative but also a crucial part of his plan to remake the American economy, an ever-expanding share of which is swallowed up by doctors’ bills and hospital stays. Making good on his promise will require not just public expenditure on a disorienting scale but also the kind of activism and creativity, the birthing of new rules and institutions, at which Washington hasn’t succeeded for generations.
(Continued here.)
NYT
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.”
(More here.)
Here's a related article from the NYT Magazine:
Taking the Hill
By MATT BAI
Sometime in the next few weeks, Congress and the White House will descend into the labyrinthine politics of comprehensive health care reform. For Barack Obama, this signals the end, in a sense, of the eventful prologue to his presidency. Impressive as they are, Obama’s legislative victories to this point — most notably the $787 billion stimulus bill and a stunningly ambitious $3.6 trillion budget resolution — have been relatively easy lifts for a popular new president installed at a time of economic crisis and buffered by comfortable majorities in the House and Senate. Sure, getting those bills passed required a fair amount of perseverance on the part of the White House, but persuading congressmen to spend public money in their districts doesn’t exactly qualify as dark magic. Designing a new health care system, on the other hand, is a legislative goal that has eluded every Democratic president since Harry Truman and that Obama repeatedly vowed to accomplish during last year’s campaign; he has said that it is not only a moral imperative but also a crucial part of his plan to remake the American economy, an ever-expanding share of which is swallowed up by doctors’ bills and hospital stays. Making good on his promise will require not just public expenditure on a disorienting scale but also the kind of activism and creativity, the birthing of new rules and institutions, at which Washington hasn’t succeeded for generations.
(Continued here.)
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