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Internal Memos: Obama Avoided Health Reforms to Build GOP Support for Legislation
Think Progress / News Analysis
Published: Monday 23 January 2012
“Lizza reports that Obama still believed that he could win over the opposition and rejected good policy in order to make the bill more acceptable to conservative opinion makers.”
Politico Pulse pulls out this telling internal memo from Ryan Lizza’s New Yorker piece this morning examining the thinking of the Obama administration during the health care reform debate. Obama publicly flirted with the idea of making a greater investment in tort reform and pursued the proposals in order to secure Republican cooperation and support:
“On July 1, 2009, his top health care adviser, Nancy-Ann DeParle, submitted a detailed nine-page policy memo asking whether the White House should consider including medical-malpractice reform in the legislation. Most Democrats opposed the idea, but the American Medical Association was pushing for it. ‘Obviously, we shouldn’t do anything that weighs down the overall effort,’ Obama wrote back, in his characteristically cautious and reasonable style, ‘but if this helps the AMA stay on board, we should explore it.”
Ultimately, none of this mattered very much. The Affordable Care Act contains funding for tort reform demonstration projects — as well as a multitude of other Republican-backed initiatives — that the GOP ignored because they were more interested in preventing Obama from signing one of the most sweeping social reforms in a generation than addressing the nation’s health care crisis.
What the administration learned all to late is that the details of the policy had absolutely no bearing on the tone of the opposition. Republicans relied on the same “big government” talking points to combat reform even as the measure became more conservative and Democratic lawmakers stripped out initiatives like the public option, end-of-life counseling and a host of other provisions that Republicans found repugnant. But no matter how much the bill changed to resemble the Heritage-backed Romneycare solution that relied on private competition and private enterprise, the GOP still claimed that the government was taking over health care and rationing services to seniors.
Lizza reports that Obama still believed that he could win over the opposition and rejected good policy in order to make the bill more acceptable to conservative opinion makers. One memo reveals, for instance, that Obama turned down a pilot program “to study the most effective treatments for patients” within the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) because it was not “politically viable” and could prove a target for Fox News. The president wrote at the end of the memo, almost apologetically, “Unfortunately I think the political guys are right about how it would be characterized. Let’s go back at it in future years, when the temperature on health care and the economy has gone down.”
Almost two years later, the temperature is still at a boiling point and the GOP presidential candidates are crisscrossing the country accusing Obama and the law of everything from ending private enterprise to jeopardizing the livelihood of seniors. Given the partisan divide of modern American politics, Republicans and their supporters in the media will invent controversy where none exists and so it’s foolhardy to abandon good policy out of fear of inflaming the critics. They’ll burn you anyway, while you’ll have a harder time defending a decision that was made on political, rather than policy, merits.
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14 comments on "Internal Memos: Obama Avoided Health Reforms to Build GOP Support for Legislation"
January 24, 2012 1:12pm
There are not enough file cabinets to hold all the promises O made during the campaign and then forgot or dropped after getting into office. I am extremely disappointed and angry. He packed his cabinet and other offices with the same people responsible for the housing meltdown when we all lost significant portions of our investments such as Geitner. Democracy is for sale now and for the foreseeable future and I cannot afford it
January 24, 2012 9:13am
The point of the article is that Obama has learned from this and we all should.
The Goal should be clarified.
GOAL: Obama needs enough support to win and to then have a mandate to do the things that need to be done.
THE STRATEGY: All efforts must go to getting Obama and more Democrats elected to support the agenda.
TACTICs must align with this strategy.
If your tactic now it to whine that he didn't do enough just look at the record. He stabilized the economy, he passed major Healthcare Legislation. His Domestic Policy successes are too numerous to list. I'd try but GM, Fair Pay, economic successes....
His Foreign Policy Successes are even more spectacular. Libya's regime change without a single American Soldier sacrificed. Ending the war in IRAQ. The Arab spring. The coordinating and stabilizing of fragile economies.
In the current environment, let's be clear, IF YOU DON'T VOTE FOR OBAMA YOU ARE VOTING AGAINST HIM (even if you choose not to vote). If you are a Progressive and vote for the Green Party Presidential candidate... it is a vote to divide the progressive vote and get a Republican into office (Remember 2000 Bush v. Gore).
The Progressives are first to "eat their young". The story was about how a centrist President tried to compromise and lost the war of words with people who were willing to lie (see: Death Panels). Yes, it could have gone better... but when Tea Party activists were out picketing there was only lukewarm hand wringing from the rest of us.
This election will redefine American politics either way. If Obama wins with a Democratic Majority in the House and Senate he will have a mandate. He will be facing that mandate having learned that the GOP cares more about their Party and winning than America. I think we've all learned that.
I believe that the moral mission of Government is to Protect and Empower America. That's why I support Democrats in every race, everywhere.
Yours,
Ed Kaine
www.VoteDemocratic.US
January 23, 2012 8:22pm
The problem with the half a loaf we got, the insurance companies are still in control, and pushing for more! We NEEDED the public option to control the insurance industries. The gop is against the public option, but even more, they're opposed to paying for their stupidity while the insurance companies are pricing us out of our ability to pay.
January 23, 2012 5:44pm
I guess it should be expected that so many politically involved people (especially people who have been around a lot of years, and who might have learned from experience and reflection on our history) have been so deeply disillusioned that anyone who could be selected by the two political parties that are authorized in the United States, and then become President of the United States, would turn out not to lead the necessary charge for revolutionary change and would not transform and use that office for the purpose of inspiring and activating an upset of the corporate controlled status quo and agenda.
Barack Obama was selected and employed to be an administrator and a manager of the Executive Branch of the federal government as it exists today. One might almost surmise that he was selected (for his great intelligence and charisma, and because he was certainly not a charter member of one or more of the ruling families) to be the chump and the fall guy to take the heat and the distracting blame for the shambles and the accumulating combined simultaneous growing tragedies of the onset of perpetual war; the widening and deepening gulf in wealth and income between the super-rich and all the rest of us; the largest-ever and most flagrant fleecing of everyday people by the incorporated powers of aristocrats that has ever occurred in human history; and the rapidly looming threat to life as we know it on earth posed by man-made and ignored global climate change.
Barack Obama has actually done an extremely credible, even commendable job - considering what the job is. This is certainly so, when contrasted with any and all of his predecessors, at least post WWII, when things changed pretty drastically. He has maintained a humane, coherent, and intelligent rhetoric and posture. What did you expect him to do for you - offer himself up to be crucified, while we ourselves do nothing that will make a difference?
Things have gone way too far for an elected President to save us, and for all of us to do little else but decide for whom and whether to vote.
It is up to we the people to think and act.
Know it or not, we are already over our heads in the struggle that will define the 21st century - Corporate power v. the people and life.
http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/governing-people-for-profits/
http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/corporations-v-persons/
January 23, 2012 5:14pm
Except when it isn't even half a loaf for the vast majority and it makes it seem as if it's been "taken care of" so all energy is deflated from the issue-- alas, President Obama is not a leader but a political animal without daring or any core beliefs worth fighting for. And of course nothing really good can come about as long as the insurance industry is running the health care industry. And that is still in place.
Yes, he did blow it big time. But that is because he didn't really stand for anything. And he is basically a Republican (as was Clinton).
While I have no faith that Obama will find himself or develop any moral gravitas or leadership talents (we can hope for a miracle), I will hold my nose and vote for the guy because the lesser of two evils he will be for sure -- and this will preserve my right to complain big time and I think the man can be pushed into doing the right thing. But he's got to be really pushed. A real uprising that will really get in his face. Although of course, he could go the other way. That is the tendency. But at least that will set things up for a genuinely progressive candidate with some inner core.
So we must try to take advantage of this namby-pamby weakness and demand change.
As revolting as it all is, we can't let the Newt or the Mitt take the helm. If you thought Bush was bad -- if you think the idiocy of war with Iraq and Afghanistan is bad, if one of those monkey's makes it into the White House and wants to distract the electorate from their domestic disasters, even Obama is cooking up Iran hate -- but the Mitt and Newt want to go after China as well.
Obama is obscenely weak, but he isn't insane.
January 23, 2012 4:06pm
Obama had a vast corps of volunteers who, like me, would have been willing to take to the streets in support of real health care reform. Instead of fighting he refused even to permit consideration of single-payer options. He, like Hillary before him, caved to the corporate interests of big pharma and insurance and never allowed consideration of real reform. Shame on him. Shame on me for thinking he might do otherwise.
January 23, 2012 5:55pm
please delete
January 23, 2012 5:39pm
The phrase "single payer option" is a clear contradiction in terms that demonstrates the propaganda induced confusion that abounds.
Single-payer means one payer and administrator, not many payer/administrators.
Single-payer means the single payer solution to the continuing and worsening health care crisis.
Single-payer does not mean one of many different payers and administrators.
Single-payer does not mean retaining the ravenous profit-taking corporations of the insurance industry as the gate-keepers controlling access to and rationing of health care.
If you think that "the (disappearing) public option" compromise has any merit, then refer to it as "a government administered insurance option", not as a "single payer option".
http://clydewinter.wordpress.com/category/health-care-crisis/
January 23, 2012 3:52pm
With a landslide victory in election, a tide of public support from grass-roots to CEOs (paupers and billionaires), Mr. O blew the most historic moment to bring about true reform to make the US competitive in the 21st century (politically, economically, morally). He blew it big time. This over 65 years man is going to boycott the election this time as a protest against same people, same agendas, different faces.
January 23, 2012 3:39pm
When Jill Stein wins the Green Party nomination, you will have a superb choice to vote for. A brilliant, honest, committed to populist change candidate.
January 23, 2012 3:28pm
This is why I will not vote for Obama this time around. During the health care reform debate he behaved as if the Republicans were reasonable. Who could believe that? This is a sign of a severe disconnect. Either that or he is just plain stupid. He doesn't seem stupid. Maybe he listens to one of the Republicans he appointed to key positions? Maybe he masqueraded as a Democrats all along but is nothing more than a Koch Brother puppet or Trojan Horse. Whatever he is is, I am clear done with him. But I am willing to admit that Mittens and Newtie are even worse.
January 23, 2012 3:27pm
Will we all feel much better with a detailed history of how gutless O on virtually every issue rationalized, excused, and caved and caved and caved?
Or do we stop calling this pathetic and admit the equally bad truth as to who it is he so predictably and steadfastly serves?
January 23, 2012 2:41pm
The great football coach Vince Lombardi once said: "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."
The same is true of politics.
All the progressive health care reform proposals in the world do no good if they don't become law. I would rather achieve some reforms--as the Affordable Care Act clearly does--than push for reforms that have no chance of passage in the current political environment.
As someone else once said: "Half a loaf is better than none."
January 23, 2012 5:29pm
The point is O bama didn't have to water the bill down. it would of passed anyway.