Obama in crucial week on healthcare

RELATED NEWS Obama unveils healthcare plan, to cost $950 bn over 10 yrs White House to publish healthcare proposals Monday Obama unveils new fund to address US housing woes

President Barack Obama may be setting up a carefully choreographed attempt to ram his healthcare plan through the US Congress over the objections of rival Republicans.

That could be the risky end result of the political theatre surrounding healthcare that culminates in a televised summit on Thursday at Washington's Blair House grouping Obama and leading Democrats and Republicans in the same room.

Obama, who devoted a great deal of his first year in office to trying to persuade Congress and the American people to accept sweeping change in the US healthcare system, now finds the effort flagging and on life support.

He and his Democrats are hard-pressed to get a final bill through the Senate, since the election of a Republican to a Massachusetts Senate seat denied Democrats their 60-vote supermajority and gave Republicans sufficient strength to use procedural blocking tactics.

Republicans, poised to make inroads into Democrats' strong majorities in the US Congress in November elections, are showing no signs that they are willing to accept any significant parts of the Democrats' healthcare plans.

After Obama unveiled his own plan on Monday, Republicans were not impressed.

"The president has crippled the credibility of this week's summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of healthcare based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected," said John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives.

A TACTIC CALLED 'RECONCILIATION'
Democrats all along have had the option to use a parliamentary procedural tactic called "reconciliation" to seek approval of their plans by a 51-vote majority in the 100-seat Senate, which would mean they would not need any Republicans.

It is risky politically because many Americans have already declared their opposition to the healthcare plans.

Some moderate Democrats might be leery of voting for it, having seen Republican Scott Brown elected in traditionally liberal Massachusetts last month by declaring his opposition to Democratic healthcare plans.

Here's how the strategy could unfold, as outlined by Norm Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute think tank:

Obama asks Republicans to offer their ideas at the Thursday summit and, as expected, they propose their favored approaches such as opening up the health industry to competition across state lines and limiting the potential size of medical malpractice lawsuit awards.

Obama agrees to incorporate these items into the healthcare legislation and then asks Republicans for their support for the bill. They insist they cannot vote for it even with their own ideas because of their opposition to the Democratic proposals.

At this point, Ornstein said, "I think he has more leverage to go the reconciliation route."

'FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION'
Democratic strategist Doug Schoen said reconciliation should now be considered a live option because Democrats need a victory on healthcare to placate their demoralized base.

"Since failure is not an option, the president has apparently decided passing a bad bill is better than passing no bill at all. They further believe that showing the Republicans to be intransigent will win them political points at the Blair House summit," Schoen said.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer left the door open to the tactic in a conference call with reporters on Monday.

"We have made no determinations on which process to move forward with if this is the path we end up going down coming out of this meeting," he said. "One thing I want to be very clear about is that the president expects and believes the American people deserve an up-or-down vote on health reform."

Larry Sabato, a political science professor at the University of Virginia, said using the reconciliation tactic could end up energizing the Republican conservative base that the party needs to turn out in November.

He doubted Republicans would be willing to make major concessions.

"They've got Obama on the ropes," he said. "Why would they let him off the ropes?"