Liberals agitated by compromise, but appear to back health reform

Politico reports that liberals are accruing a long list of reasons to be upset about the health reform negotiations: "A single-payer plan, a public option, a state 'opt-out' of the public option, a trigger and a Medicare buy-in — all ideas pushed by Democrats and blessed by [President] Obama at various times but now gone from the bill."

"Obama's need to pass a reform bill ahead of the 2010 elections drove the political calculus as the calendar turned to December, when the days grew short and the pressure to sign something, anything, began to take precedence," Politico writes. "Otherwise, Democrats risked facing voters next fall with little to show for a full year of twin congressional majorities." The thing that may have most angered liberals, however, "is that Obama himself never seemed willing to push hard enough for the public option — and, in fact, all but took it off the table in August when he said he could sign a bill that didn't include it" (Gordon, 12/15).

Meanwhile, Senate liberals demurred to more moderate members of their caucus earlier this week, acknowledging that they would need to compromise in order to pass the legislation, The Hill reports. "Some liberals who said they would back the legislation hinted they would do so with disappointment, while liberal activists and House members expressed deep displeasure with the Senate's move to the center" (Young, 12/15).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.