Healthcare Reform Battle Royale

Right before the Super Bowl kickoff, President Obama fired his latest salvo in his fight for health insurance reform. He announced that his administration was planning a bipartisan debate at the White House. The half-day-long discussion on healthcare reform would take place on February 25th. Most importantly, it will be televised to the public.



That transparency is refreshing, especially since Obama has been criticized for reneging on his campaign pledge that important debates would be aired "live on C-SPAN" for the American people to see. The secrecy of the House of Representatives' and Senate's negotiations to reconcile their bills was clearly unsuccessful. While some amount of back-room deals and horse-trading for certain politicians' votes is common on Capitol Hill, Obama had promised to change politics as usual.



Unlike the discussions over the holidays, Republicans will also be included in the negotiations. Admittedly, most Republicans in Congress had publicly stated that they had no intention of voting for the medical insurance changes no matter what; it is possible that Congressional Democrats wanted to avoid the insertion of a "poison pill" into the legislation--a provision that would turn off a portion of the Democratic caucus without gaining any Republican votes. However, the minority party's exclusion only made the public more suspicious of whether the individual health insurance proposals were actually in their best interest.



Their win in last month's Massachusetts special election has given Republicans more power. They now have the ability to filibuster and stop any legislation, so the hands of Democratic leadership are tied. Recently, Obama has taken a new tack: urging Republicans to step up to the plate and provide their own health insurance solutions. With the power to prevent Democratic legislation from steamrolling over them, Republicans have regained part of the responsibility for governing. Democrats are betting that simply opposing their policies will no longer work with the public--a risky gamble for this fall's midterm elections.



Republican leaders are looking forward to the event, because it will allow them to draw more attention to their incremental approach to providing low cost medical insurance. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and top House Republican John Boehner prefer that Obama drop the existing legislation and start over. For his part, Obama continues to push the bills already passed by House and Senate Democrats as the starting point for negotiations on health insurance: the administration is urging both chambers of Congress to present a compromise at the meeting. Republicans were included on the ground floor of Senate Finance Committee negotiations last summer, but the bipartisan talks reached an impasse.



The question remains: will this meeting make true progress, or is it simply political theater? Obama recently surprised Republicans with a televised visit to their House of Representatives delegation; while there, he asked and answered pointed questions about, for example, the millions of Americans unable to buy medical insurance due to pre-existing conditions. Although many viewed his appearance as a success, little substantiative headway was made. Some believe that the meeting will do more to highlight the Democrats' branding of the Republicans as the "Party of No", since Obama has not mentioned any specific compromises he is willing to make, but others are more optimistic.



(Image: Juliana Coutinho under CC 2.0)



Yamileth Medina is an up and coming expert on Health Insurance and Healthcare Reform. She aims to help people realize that they can find quality medical insurance right now. Yamileth lives in Miami, FL.