Obama to stress common ground in health speech

Much agreement exists on issue, analysts say

Demonstrators for and against President Obama’s health care proposals rallied before the start of a town hall-style meeting last month at South Lakes High School in Reston, Va. (Associated Press)

By Michael Kranish Globe Staff / September 4, 2009

WASHINGTON - As President Obama prepares to deliver a make-or-break address on health care to a joint session of Congress next week, he is expected to turn the focus away from controversial issues such as the “public option’’ plan and toward key areas of bipartisan agreement, including enabling anyone to buy insurance regardless of preexisting conditions, according to White House and congressional officials.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, Obama’s health care adviser, said that outrage over insurance company practices has grown so great that Congress could quickly pass legislation to fix the problem, with or without broader proposals such as requiring people to ob tain coverage.

“I think the insurance market reforms are so deeply thought to be needed that I think the Congress would be willing to enact those apart from the increases in coverage,’’ DeParle said in a recent interview.

DeParle stressed that Obama wants much more in his health care overhaul, including federal subsidies for lower-income people who can’t afford to buy insurance.

But if some parts of the reform effort fail to gain enough support, Obama could deploy a backup plan that includes measures such as ending the denial of coverage - and give him an interim victory. At the least, the potential for passing such a plan could give the president leverage to win concessions from Congress.

Amid all the angry discussion at town hall meetings, relatively little attention has been paid to the fact that many Republicans agree broadly with Obama - though not necessarily on the details - on ideas such as making it easier for small businesses to band together to buy insurance for their employees and for workers to take their insurance with them from one company to another, keeping the plan deficit-neutral, and imposing new regulations on the insurance industry to make it easier for anyone to get coverage.

DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said there is consensus on as much as 85 percent of the issues in the health care debate, a theme that Obama is likely to stress in his address. “I was amazed at how much agreement there was,’’ she said. “That is something that a year ago I could not have imagined, that Republicans and Democrats would say we all need to have health insurance.’’

Some advocates of the health care overhaul are also urging that more attention be paid to the areas of likely agreement to help rebuild wavering public support.

“I don’t think there’s an appreciable portion of the American public that understands there are so many other things that are really important and for which there is a close to consensus,’’ said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA. “But people don’t understand it because all they are hearing about are the controversial provisions like the public plan option.’’
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