In his speech to a joint session of Congress last night, President Obama made one thing abundantly clear: the U.S. healthcare system needs immediate reform, or else people without coverage—and even those with restrictive, ineffective coverage—will continue to die needlessly, and the deficit will continue to expand. “[Obama] added an exclamation point to the importance of healthcare,” said Georgetown University government professor Stephen Wayne.
Among the options presented to Congress for making effective, affordable healthcare available to every American is the creation of a self-sustaining public option to compete with the insurance companies. A public option undoubtedly lies at the heart of any substantive healthcare reform package. Nonetheless, at this point in Obama’s presidency, it would be nothing short of an absolute disaster for the President (and future efforts at healthcare reform) if he were to fail to accomplish any reform at all. By pushing the public option too hard against the weight of hardcore conservatives and insurance companies’ corporate agendas, Obama runs the risk of severely hampering the rest of his program and any future progressive reform in other areas.
Considering how fragile the situation is at this moment, a healthcare reform bill that simply expands coverage and enacts new laws regulating insurance companies would be a positive step forward.
The road to universal coverage is long and incremental. In fact, the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) claimed his biggest regret was not compromising with then-President Nixon’s healthcare plan in the early 1970s because it wasn’t entirely comprehensive. So does compromising with the Republicans to pass a minor reform bill mean defeat? Not necessarily—it means bolstering Obama’s political clout and laying the foundation for full-fledged, public, universal healthcare in the future.
At the end of his speech, Obama addressed the fact that bringing about healthcare reform now, as opposed to at the end of his second term, isn’t the “politically safe” thing to do. But as Obama explained, “We did not come here to fear the future. We came here to shape it.” Precisely because the United States so desperately needs reform, Obama should move forward with Congress to pass healthcare reform in any way he can; if the public option proves so contentious that it must be dropped, the other components of the bill will leave the door open for affordable public coverage in the future.
