February
21, 2007
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. Feb. 21 — President Bush’s plan to expand health coverage by revamping the tax code has been pronounced dead by leading Democrats on Capitol Hill. But Mr. Bush, ever the optimist, forged ahead today, conducting an Oprah Winfrey-like chat session here with people who are uninsured.
“I have a pre-existing condition, I have trouble with my left knee and the quotes were just outrageous and I’m just kind of stuck,” Marty Ginn, an office manager from nearby McMinnville, told Mr. Bush, who held forth in talk show mode for nearly an hour, cracking jokes about everything from his mother to “the hair follicle benefit.”
The roundtable discussion, which followed a similar, if less lively, event with health insurance executives in Washington on Tuesday, was aimed at drumming up support for Mr. Bush’s plan to provide tax breaks for low-income workers to buy insurance, and tax increases for those with generous employer-sponsored plans.
“I think it’ll work for you, Danny, I really do,” Mr. Bush told another participant, a nursery manager named Danny Jennings, after encouraging Mr. Jennings to take the opportunity to make a sales pitch for his rhododendrons.
Despite Mr. Bush’s cheery outlook, the two parties remain miles apart in their visions for how to cover the nation’s 47 million uninsured. Leading Democrats, including Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Finance Committee, and Representative Pete Stark of California, chairman of the subcommittee overseeing health policy, said in interviews that Mr. Bush’s plan is far too dependent on the private sector, and they do not envision anything like it becoming law.
Mr. Stark called it “a farcical move” that is “primarily designed to encourage employers to drop group coverage,” while Mr. Baucus said the plan is “too much focused on the individual market.” But Mr. Baucus did give the president credit for “stirring up the debate” with his idea for revamping the tax code.
“It’s an out-of-the-box thought,” the senator said. “A lot of people are talking about it.”
Mr. Bush, though, sees morsels of encouragement in a recent letter from five Democratic and five Republican senators, led by Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, who say they want to work toward compromise.
The Republicans, who included Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the party whip, said they agreed in principle that universal coverage is the goal, saying “the health care system cannot be fixed without providing solutions for everyone.” The Democrats, for their part, said economists had convinced them that the tax rules needed to be modernized, and that “current rules disproportionately favor the most affluent.”
“We realize that the ultimate legislation is not going to look exactly as the president proposed, and that there’s going to be compromise on both sides,” said Al Hubbard, the director of the National Economic Council and a chief architect of the plan.
Whether that spells legislative possibilities for 2007 is difficult to say.
