ESPO: Obama called flexible on health reforms

OPINION/ANALYSIS

The reversals, hints of concessions and politically dicey proposals on health care are piling up for President Obama, whose appeal for bipartisan legislation carries risk with no guarantee of reward.

By one definition, that’s called presidential leadership - flexibility first - meant to embolden others to do the same.

By another, it’s political inconsistency that risks offending people on Medicare, liberals who favor government-run health care and union families with coverage negotiated by contract with employers.

“Many of us are prepared to accept changes that maybe wouldn’t be our first choice,” says Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat. He meant it as a challenge to Republicans, few of whom have seemed interested in seeking common ground on health care reform with the White House and Democrats who control Congress.

So far, Mr. Obama has been anything but uninterested.

“He is flexible when it comes to methods,” his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said recently. “But when it comes to outcomes, he is not,” referring to the president’s goal of curtailing health care costs while spreading coverage to millions who lack it.

Mr. Obama has called for $600 billion in savings over the next 10 years from Medicare and Medicaid. More than a decade ago, when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Georgia Republican, and his party wanted to save about $270 billion from Medicare over seven years, Democrats accused them of seeking to cut essential programs.

Mr. Obama did some attacking of his own in last year’s presidential campaign, criticizing his opponent, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, over his proposal to tax health insurance benefits. Mr. Obama now has opened the door to just that idea.

“I don’t want to prejudge what they’re doing,” the president said recently about Senate supporters of a plan to tax workers with expensive insurance through their jobs.

Gerald W. McEntee, president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said members of the union “are not going to tolerate that.” Mr. Obama is “a person of his word,” he added pointedly, referring to the campaign promises.

Any tax on health care benefits would violate two campaign pledges.

Mr. Obama campaigned against that specific proposal and pledged often not to raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000 a year. Pressed in April on the subject, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said there were no caveats, health benefits or otherwise.

The president also is a convert to the cause of requiring people to purchase insurance, with waivers in cases of financial hardship. He opposed these mandates last year when his main Democratic presidential rival, then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, backed them.

Now, he says, “my thinking on the issue of mandates has evolved. And I think that that is typical of most people who study this problem deeper.”

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