United States

Negotiating health care reform

Republicans presented a united front in opposition to Democratic proposals for health care reform, branding them a “government takeover” of health care and protesting that the price tag would be devastatingly high. Some Republicans also claimed—falsely—that the Democratic plan would establish “death panels” that would deny coverage to seniors. Although there was also strong opposition to various aspects of the plan within the Democratic Party, the House of Representatives passed a sweeping reform bill in November 2009. The Senate was more circumspect, with Obama seemingly ceding the initiative to the so-called “Group of Six,” a group of three Republican and three Democratic senators led by conservative Democrat Sen. Max Baucus. The bill that was ultimately passed in the Senate called for considerably less change than the House bill (most notably excluding the “public option” through which a government-run program would have provided lower-cost competition for private insurance companies). It just barely survived a filibuster attempt by Republicans, holding all 58 Democrats plus the Senate’s two independents, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

Before the two houses could attempt to bridge the differences in their bills, the Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate as a result of the victory of Republican Scott Brown in January 2010 in the special election in Massachusetts held to replace interim senator Paul Kirk (a Democrat), who had been appointed to the seat following the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy—who, ironically, had committed much of his career in government to health care reform. Although the prospects for passage dimmed, the president and the Democratic leadership, especially Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, pushed on, with Obama convening a special summit of Democrats and Republicans to debate the merits of the bills.