Obama puts health care on 'back burner'

The Washington Post: President Barack Obama seems to have put health care on the back burner as he focuses on financial reform and nuclear proliferation.

"Three months ago, at a private meeting of nervous House Democratic lawmakers, President Obama promised to put the full weight of his office behind the marketing of the health-care bill once it became law. … But since April 1, the subject has hardly escaped his lips publicly, and it looks like the entire month of April might go by without a presidential event focused on health care. ... A White House official said Tuesday that the president intends to be actively involved in promoting the benefits of the new law. ... In the meantime, the official pointed to under-the-radar efforts to get the word out by others in the Obama administration. For example, the IRS sent out postcards Monday to millions of small-business owners, informing them of tax credits they might receive to provide health-care benefits to their employees." Democratic lawmakers, however, "are eager to communicate the law's benefits to their constituents in the face of an ongoing barrage of criticism of it from their challengers and tea party activists. The worry is that the White House could wait too long to start that process, essentially repeating the same mistake that many Democrats believe they made early in the health-care fight, by ceding control over the message to their opponents" (Shear, 4/20).

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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.