Still No Majority for Obama

Obama’s “healthcare summit” ended without compromise. Republicans stuck with their unconditional “no.”

What has been taken for granted in other industrialized nations for decades remains an open question in the United States: universal health insurance. Even after seven hours at the green table in front of television cameras, there was no agreement between the Obama administration and the Republican opposition on the question of healthcare reform. Both sides engaged in showy speech-causing what sounded suspiciously like campaign rhetoric. However, Republicans remained strictly opposed to reform in spite of the fact that Obama had made numerous concessions to them; they are still the party of “no.”

Obama invited all parties to the summit after progress on healthcare reform in Congress had come to a standstill. Those reforms that would have made health insurance available to about 31 million workers currently without it had been blocked. It had actually been approved by the Senate in December, but at the end of January a Republican won the special election in Massachusetts for the Senate seat vacant since Ted Kennedy’s death. Scott Brown owed his victory to the efforts of Republican Party insiders along with the right-wing Tea Party movement, and their main target was healthcare reform.

With Brown’s victory, the Democrats lost their “super majority” of Senate seats necessary to pass the reform package. Simultaneously, they lost their legitimate claim to cover for America’s silent majority. Currently, opinion polls are running against providing health insurance for everyone because of the cost.

The only agreement between both sides was that there were too many people in the United States without health insurance, and that healthcare in the United States was too expensive. Both failings have been acknowledged for years and generations of American presidents have tried to rectify the situation in vain.

Republican and Democratic solutions to these problems are miles apart. Republicans oppose anything they perceive as “big government” meddling in individual healthcare; they do not want insurance to be mandatory, and they are against any governmental oversight of private insurers.

According to Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, insurance fraud would be best addressed if those insured paid closer attention to their bills.

Democrats, on the other hand, want to place stricter controls on a system driven by pure profit. They want to control excesses in the pricing and exclusion policies of the (all private) insurance firms. They also want to continue working toward the goal of universal health insurance.

Emotional appeals played a big part at the healthcare summit. Democrats argued that 1,000 people die each week for lack of health insurance. Republicans countered with “big government,” the cost explosion and attacked what they said was an “unpopular reform.”

In the healthcare summit, Barack Obama tried to publicly show that he was not wheeling and dealing with his reforms, but was being transparent. He publicly asked for cooperation from the opposition. He personally moderated the summit debate and provided numerous legal and technical details with examples to support his case.

The president showed himself to be knowledgeable on the subject as well as an able communicator of his opinions. Nonetheless, healthcare reform remains a touchy undertaking. Obama wants to settle the matter as soon as possible. To do so — in the event Republicans stand fast with their “no” — he has only two options: he either withdraws his reform package or he proceeds with a parliamentary trick known as “reconciliation,” whereby he needs only a majority of 51 to 49 to win in the Senate.

The reconciliation procedure has been used 22 times in the last three decades — mostly by Republican administrations. This time, Republicans are already sharpening their knives. Their claim: Obama is using reconciliation to bypass the will of the people. With just a few months to go before the mid-term elections, both sides are taking a risk.