The New Health Dialogue

Health reform has had many names. It’s been Reid’s bill, Baucus’s bill, the HELP Committee’s bill, the House Tri-Committee leadership’s bill -- but at the end of the day, health reform is ultimately Obama’s bill. Obama made health reform his top domestic priority this year, and told the  Washington Post he believes he is close to delivering on his campaign promises.

Despite criticism from progressives like Howard Dean that the health care bill poised to pass the Senate on Christmas Eve is too weak (it lacks a public option), and criticisms from Republicans that it will raise costs and cut benefits (we don’t think so and neither does the CBO), Obama is proud of the progress Congress made this year. He told the Post,

….he is "not just grudgingly supporting the bill. I am very enthusiastic about what we have achieved."

"Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill...Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill."

In listing those priorities, he cited the 30 million uninsured Americans projected to receive coverage, estimated savings of more than $1 trillion over the next two decades, a "patients' bill of rights on steroids," and tax breaks to help small businesses pay for employee coverage.

We shouldn’t forget exactly how huge an undertaking this is. For the better part of a century,  presidents have tried and failed to pass comprehensive health reform. President Obama is closer than any president has ever been to passing reform. And at the same time, he's had to contend with a serious financial crisis and competing policy priorities such as financial reform and cap-and-trade. Presidential historian Robert Dallek told the Post,

While Obama has had a crisis, it's not the sort that the opposition would give in to his demands…Obama, in a sense, has had a tougher assignment than either Roosevelt or Johnson had…The fact that he's getting so close on this health-care bill speaks to his talent of leadership, doggedness and determination to put across the biggest piece of social legislation since Social Security.

So when the president says “We are on the precipice of an achievement that has eluded Congress and presidents for generations,” he means it. The current health reform bill may not be everything everyone wants. No big bill is. But this legislation, which we hope will reach the president's desk in a month or so, is a solid foundation for future progress on controlling health care costs, and improving quality and access.