There Is No Fallback Proposal
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published an article by Laura Meckler claiming that the White House has a specific scaled-down alternate health care plan, which they will go with if their comprehensive health care proposal fails to win enough support at the health care summit, which of course took place today:
His leading alternate approach would provide health insurance to perhaps 15 million Americans, about half what the comprehensive bill would cover, according to two people familiar with the planning.
It would do that by requiring insurance companies to allow people up to 26 years old to stay on their parents’ health plans, and by modestly expanding two federal-state health programs, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, one person said. The cost to the federal government would be about one-fourth the price tag for the broader effort, which the White House has said would cost about $950 billion over 10 years.
Officials cautioned that no final decisions had been made but said the smaller plan’s outlines are in place in case the larger plan fails.
According to Ezra Klein, it’s not true:
The Wall Street Journal has a splashy piece this evening on the White House’s plan B for health-care reform: a fallback approach that would cover 15 million people, do less to reform the system and cut costs, and carry a lower price tag. Call it health-care lite.
Plan B has been around for awhile. In August, discussions raged in the White House over whether to pare back the bill. The comprehensive folks won the argument, but people also drew up plans for how you could pare back the bill, if it came to that. More thinking was done on this in the aftermath of the Massachusetts election, when Rahm Emanuel and some of the political folks again argued for retreating to a more modest bill. As you’d expect, these conversations included proposals for how that smaller bill would look.
At this point, I could quote some White House sources swearing up and down that that’s all this is. A vestigial document that’s being blown out of proportion by a conservative paper interested in an agenda-setting story. They’re furious over this story. None of the quotes are sourced to the White House — not even anonymously — raising questions that the whole thing is sabotage. But it hardly matters. There’s no Plan B at this point in the game, and most everyone knows it.
9 Responses to “There Is No Fallback Proposal”
Then maybe it's time to make one. Or several.
I respectfully disagree Prof. I think it's time to put the pedal to the metal. It may not be the safe thing to do politically, but I believe it's the right thing to do. Either that or go to the plan DLS suggested, but I doubt something that reality based will happen in this congress.
Walking back to the White House from Blair House at the lunch break reporters asked Obama if he had a plan B. He replied “I always have a plan” so make of that what you will.
I'm in a good mood, who knows why –
“asked Obama if he had a plan B. He replied 'I always have a plan'”
What's he going to say, no? [chuckle] Actually, he should have done that, just to yank the Herd's chain — and wait for the result, maybe to calibrate his staff's Fox-O-Meter.
And I respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement.
The bill is pointed at a wall, because the blue dogs aren't on board. Even reconciliation and the option to pass the senate bill as-is is dead without them. Do you think that this summit is being held to get people to like the bill?
Obama made it clear that his crew is trying to figure out how to tweak the bill to get enough Republicans on board to pass it, and that's probably not going to fly. You want it to pass because it would be a base for further regulation, and Republicans don't want it to pass because it would be a base for further regulation. If Republicans are finally willing to take on the AMA (I still couldn't believe that McCain even mentioned them, and even further amazed that no one noticed), PhRMA, the hospitals association and, yes, the insurance companies through competition and Medicare/Medicaid/xCHIP reform, then Democrats should join in.
If they keep pushing the same bill, or just slight variations of it, they're going to get the same results. Believing otherwise is insanity.
Maybe so prof, but lots of people who want this passed have watched HCR be sidelined and shot down for decades now. They are tired of that history and don't believe the republicans have any intention of resurrecting it with their starting-over-clean-slate talking point. We shall see…
Why? It wouldn't get any Republican votes unless it was nothing but a proposal from their own party with no ideas from the Democratic side.
I don't believe any of them! But this “they'd reject anything” stuff is NOT known. The Democrats crafted their main bill behind closed doors, excluding the Republicans and blue dogs, then recycled and modified those ideas. If the Republicans are lying, make them prove it — start over. I still say an apology for kicking them out the first time would also go a long way to getting this going, or do you guys still deny they did that?
For the record — I don't agree with either of them, because neither one has realistically addressed the real elephants (yes, there are many) in the room, including the insurance cartels. I just hate hearing the same lame zombie points repeated like they meant something.
Sounds like the Democrats need an exit strategy.