Ex-Clinton aides: Obama’s health plan needs direction

President Obama went out of his way to avoid the mistakes President Clinton made during his own health care reform battle 16 years ago - springing his own, hyper-detailed 1,342-page reform plan on Congress - but veterans of that White House say the new president has gone too far in the opposite direction.

With Congress put in charge of writing the legislation, the debate spiraled out of Mr. Obama’s hands this summer, and Republicans are already gloating that they have bloodied the new president on one of his administration’s top priorities.

Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and a former Clinton special counsel, said Mr. Obama seems to have used Mr. Clinton’s lesson as his primer on what not to do.

“They all thought they made a mistake in not letting Congress write the bill,” Mr. Davis said in an interview.

“While [Mr. Obama] had the right idea about not dropping a 1,000-page bill, he went too far in the other direction about not telling the American people what he stands for,” added Mr. Davis, a regular contributor of opinion pieces to The Washington Times.

The absence of a coherent message leads to “scary lies,” Mr. Davis said, but similar problems erupted in 1993 and 1994 because the public was confused by what the Clinton proposal would do.

Mr. Clinton himself, in an interview in an upcoming edition of Esquire magazine, predicted this year’s health care fight is “going to have a different ending,” and Democrats should be prepared to pass a bill with little or no Republican help.

In May, Mr. Obama declared “the stars are aligned” to pass a sweeping measure after previous reform efforts foundered, then stepped back to allow his party’s congressional leaders to wrangle over the details.

That didn’t work, and Mr. Obama on Wednesday travels to Capitol Hill to address the House and Senate, looking to change the dynamic of the debate after a politically difficult August. Mr. Clinton gave his own health care address to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 22, 1993, but the Obama White House rejects any parallels.

The Clinton speech “was the beginning of a health care process rather than what we see, quite frankly, as being close to the end,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. He added that both presidents chose to use the rare joint address as a way to engage millions of Americans.

Soon after the 1993 speech, the Clinton White House presented the telephone-book-thick bill to lawmakers, who blanched. The bill never even got a vote on either the Senate or House floor before collapsing.

Lesson learned, former aides say.

Mr. Obama took a hands-off approach, detailing his principles of universal health insurance coverage and lower costs, but letting Congress write multiple pieces of legislation that will later be merged for a final vote.

Jeffrey Frankel, who served on Mr. Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1996 to 1999, said Mr. Obama should have ignored pundits who said he shouldn’t repeat the mistake of presenting a fully formed plan.

“The president did it the opposite way, and that’s very difficult to do,” he said.

Story Continues →