Barack Obama comes to town hoping to sell health insurance overhaul

Mar 10, 2010 — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Bill Lambrecht

Mar. 10, 2010 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will try to rally a skeptical public behind his health insurance overhaul in a speech in St. Charles today that may remind Missourians of Obama's days as a hard-charging candidate.

Hoping to bring a sense of urgency to the debate, the White House is pursuing a campaign-style approach that aims broadsides at the insurance industry and warns of a rash of higher premiums.

When Obama takes the stage at St. Charles High School before about 400 people this afternoon, he is expected to skewer the industry, as he did repeatedly during a speech Monday outside Philadelphia. The president also is ratcheting up the rhetoric about what he sees as an out-of-touch Congress attuned to politics rather than the needs of Americans.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama thought people needed to be aware of plans by some health insurers for double-digit premium increases.

"The president wants to make the case again for what happens if we walk away, what happens if we start over," Gibbs said.

The White House said Tuesday night that Obama planned to spell out a new White House initiative today that would pay private auditors to root out waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Improper payments for those two programs last year were estimated at $54 billion.

Thus far, Congress has not subscribed to the urgency the president seeks. The White House said it was looking for Congress to act by the end of next week, when the president leaves on a trip to Indonesia and Australia.

But with the outcome of the next House vote on the insurance overhaul uncertain, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Tuesday that his chamber would try to finish the health bill and the president's budget by Congress's Easter recess.

"If we can, we can. If we can't, we can't," Hoyer said.

If White House aides hoped that the Midwest visit today could snare another vote from the Missouri delegation, they might be disappointed. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Lexington, one of 39 House Democrats who voted against the party's health-care legislation in December and the only Missouri Democrat to do so, said Tuesday that he had seen nothing to change his mind.

In an interview, Skelton said he worried that the Senate-passed bill -- which the House will take up first -- lacked teeth to prevent abortion funding and threatened rural hospitals by trimming Medicare payments. He reiterated his belief that Democrats should move incrementally rather than making broad changes in the insurance system.

"I think we need to walk before we run," Skelton said. "I don't want them to do something to the detriment of my people."

Obama's visit prompted several steps by opponents of the Democratic health insurance plan.

Tea Party organizers said that they intended to rally at 5 p.m. on Ninth Street between Lucas Avenue and Delmar Boulevard in St. Louis. Republicans in Congress also planned to weigh in: Rep. Todd Akin, R-Town and Country, scheduled a video town hall at the St. Charles Convention Center at 10 a.m., an event at which GOP concerns will be raised.

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond and Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Springfield, who is campaigning for the Republican nomination to challenge for the seat Bond will leave open, plan a news conference in Washington this morning about the president's visit.

Bond suggested that he would be unlikely to support the Democratic-drawn proposals no matter how they got altered in coming days.

"It's like putting a couple extra rear-view mirrors on a car headed over a cliff," he said.

White House spokesman Matthew Lehrich, asked why Obama chose St. Charles for his speech, said the president "believes it's important to get out of Washington, where people worry about things like poll numbers and news cycles, and into St. Charles, where families are worrying about how to keep up with health insurance premiums."

Convenience also could have entered into the decision: The president is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser tonight for Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at the Renaissance Grand Hotel in St. Louis.

McCaskill's office said it was unclear whether she would be back in St. Louis in time for the president's speech because of Senate business. Other Missourians in Congress say they expect to be too busy with votes in the House to return for the president's speech.

McCaskill declined during an interview to offer support for what could emerge as a health care compromise, saying she needs to see how it's written. If the administration musters the 216 House votes need to pass Senate legislation, the next step would be the so-called reconciliation process, under which Congress hammers out a final version to submit to the Senate for an up-or-down vote requiring a simple majority.

McCaskill said the president should take pains in his speech to break the health care legislation into simpler terms and to stress cost savings from provisions such as those aimed at reducing Medicare waste and fraud.

"When you talk about various pieces of the bill, it's amazing how often you get heads nodding. But people think the whole bill is too big, too scary," she said.

She added: "I think people need to get comfortable with the idea that if we don't pass a comprehensive bill, it's basically saying that Congress is unable to take a comprehensive approach and that people's costs are going to march up for a long time to come."

Those who tune in to the speech can expect to hear more of the president's recent Trumanesque attacks on Congress. In Pennsylvania on Monday, Obama referred to Washington's "echo chamber in full throttle" and asserted that Congress thought more about re-election politics than about doing what's right.

Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, said he believed people in St. Louis had grown weary of "petty political bickering and arbitrary roadblocks thrown up either for political purposes or by people making big bucks from a broken system."

Carnahan said that he hoped to be involved in making the legislation more palatable by fixing flaws in Medicare drug reimbursements and eliminating "sweetheart deals" in the Senate bill that outraged the public.

Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, said he expected the president to stress how the reforms Democrats seek would end abuses by health insurers.

"I really don't care if we pass it with a simple majority or a larger margin because the people I represent don't care about all that," Clay said. "The 80,000 people in my district without health insurance care about their next illness, and those with coverage worry about insurance companies stopping it."

Newstex ID: KRTB-0187-42763063