Health Care Reform: Obama Goes on the Offensive

With the GOP and insurers spending millions on anti-reform ad campaigns—and a new poll showing the blitz may be working—the President plans a prime time appeal

By Esmé E. Deprez

The road to overhauling America's health-care system has been rocky at best for President Barack Obama, as political opponents and business interests took their shots. Now, though, it looks as if the concerns are seeping past the Beltway.

On Monday, July 20, results of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll were released, showing waning public support for Obama's health-reform efforts. Of the random sampling of 1,001 adults taken by telephone from July 15 to 18, 49% approved of his handling of health care, down from 57% in late April. Disapproval has risen accordingly, up to 44%, from 29%, over the same period. The poll has a possible margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Obama wasn't backing down. He met Monday with health-care professionals at Children's National Medical Center in Washington and discussed his intention to get a bill through Congress by the end of the year. "The need for reform is urgent and it is indisputable," Obama said, according to a White House transcript. "No one denies that we're on an unsustainable path. We all know there are more efficient ways of doing it."

aiming for a"deficit-neutral" plan

While many estimates put the price tag for the two plans working through the House and Senate at around $1 trillion over the next decade, Obama has expressed his conviction that a deficit-neutral plan can be shaped. He'll continue pleading his case in a prime time press conference Wednesday and at a town hall meeting in Ohio on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele repeated a GOP talking point before the National Press Club, also on Monday, comparing the proposed reform to socialism. The party has recently stepped up advertising campaigns in Nevada, Arkansas, and North Dakota and on the Internet. On a national level, the health insurance industry has done the same, with a $1.4 million television ad campaign, according to the Associated Press.

How the politicking plays out with the public remains to be seen. Rosemary Atkinson, 58, a facilities manager at a Midtown Manhattan law firm, supports a public health plan—that is, one offered by the government in competition with private insurance—but is worried that Obama is trying to accomplish too many tasks at once. Health-care legislation that gets passed in the midst of such chaos, she says, may be hastily constructed and end up costing taxpayers more. "They should take their time and make sure it's more thought-out," Atkinson says. "Get the economy back on track first."

the AMA supports the White House

At the same time, Atkinson fears for the millions of Americans who are losing their jobs—and their health insurance along with it. Atkinson's 62-year-old sister, a former administrative assistant, was let go a year ago. She was just diagnosed with gum disease and her health benefits will run out at the end of this year. "She's getting despondent," Atkinson says. "There should be some type of short-term fix that could help the unemployed" right now. (A provision in the stimulus law signed earlier this year extends employer health coverage through 2009 via the COBRA program, with a 65% federal subsidy, for some who are laid off.)

The health-care industry appears to be as split as Congress and the public over the issue. The American Medical Assn. declared its support last week for the House reform bill, its first-ever such endorsement. Meanwhile, insurance companies have lobbied heavily against a public insurance plan, arguing that it would drive them out of business.

In a repeat of the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton and then-First Lady Hillary Clinton tried to push through a controversial plan, Republicans are again warning of excruciatingly long waiting times to see physicians. Opponents of the Obama plan will no doubt see the latest poll results as support for their stance.

Deprez is a reporter for BusinessWeek.

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