Lawmakers press Obama to 'speak out' for health bills

Liberal legislators feel that their leaders have done their job, and now it's time for President Obama to step up to the plate, Politico reports. "Now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has announced he'll try to push through a health care reform bill with a public option, liberals are turning their focus — and their frustrations — on Barack Obama, the man who brought them to the outskirts of the progressive promise land." Many liberals in Congress have felt that way for some time, but as Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, put it, "this health care bill really becomes his at this point" (Thrush and Brown, 10/27).

A spokesperson for Obama said Monday that the president is pleased with Reid's proposal, USA Today reports. "He supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition," the spokesman said. A top economic adviser said the public option would be "a competitive, alternative choice, constraining the ability of insurers to raise premiums, and thus containing the growth rate of costs" (Jackson, 10/26).

Meanwhile, the president himself continued a fundraising tour that some say is a distraction from health care and other critical issues with an appearance in Miami Beach Monday, the New York Times reports. He's made 26 fundraising appearances since taking office, including four in less than two weeks, to raise money for Democratic congressional candidates. Advisers have calculated that the maintaining congressional majorities is worth the public appearance of frequenting so many fundraising events (Zeleny, 10/26).

The fundraising trips are also a platform for the President to make his health care pitches. MSNBC/Associated Press reports that, speaking in Miami, he said the push to overhaul the health system is "going to get harder… Now's the time when all the special interests are saying, 'Oh, this is really going to happen, we might lose some of our profits.' And they start paying big lobbyists, and they start twisting arms" (10/27).

The president also reminded potential contributors, "I've tried to explain… just because I'm skinny doesn't mean I'm not tough. I don't rattle. I'm not going to shrink back, because now is the time for us to continue to push and follow through on those things that we know have to be done buy have not been done in decades," Reuters reports (Holland, 10/26).

Obama may also have to answer critics who are calling him out for breaking a campaign pledge to negotiate health reform in public view, Politico reports in a separate story. "When Barack Obama was running for president, he vowed to lead the most open and transparent government in history. Candidate Obama even promised to negotiate health care reform live on television. … And now his top lieutenants are working in secret with leading Democrats to craft the health care bill that will be debated on the Senate floor" (Frates, 10/27).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.