Health Care Bipartisanship Falling Apart?

5013485President Obama and Senate congressional leaders have insisted from the get-go that they wanted their efforts at health care reform to be bipartisan. However, as the clock winds down to their self-imposed deadline for reform, liberal and centrist Democrats alike seem to be tired of waiting for their Republican counterparts to get on board.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday reportedly told Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who is in charge of health care reform in the Senate Finance Committee, to forget about winning Republican support for the legislation. Furthermore, the Senate leader told Baucus that as many as 10 to 15 Democrats would drop their support for the bill if it does not include a government-sponsored health insurance plan, or "public option," but taxes health benefits, according to the newspaper Roll Call.

Baucus has been working closely to try to forge a bipartisan compromise with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the top Republican on the committee, but Grassley has refused to budge from his position against the public plan.

"I am going to make sure we are not going to nationalize health insurance, and a public plan is the first step to doing that," Grassley said on "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

Baucus and Grassley have been trying to work out their differences before introducing health care legislation in the Finance Committee. Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Kennedy's Health, Educaiton, Labor and Pensions Committee has introduced a bill thought to be more liberal than anything the Finance team has been considering, with a proposal for a public option and a mandate for employers to provide benefits.

Now that Reid has informed Baucus that bipartisanship is no longer a priority, his committee has already started reconsidering the idea of taxing some health care benefits, an idea that is highly unpopular with the public and opposed by the president -- but seen as a means of making the reform package deficit-neutral.

Reid's push for liberal health care reform came on the very day Al Franken was sworn in as a senator for Minnesota, bringing the Democrats' majority in the Senate to a filibuster-proof count of 60.

The change in strategy also corresponds with stepped-up efforts from progressives in Congress to put their foot down on what they consider to be critical components of reform, like the public option. Liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has gone so far as to say he will start a "Coalition of the Unwilling" -- a group of progressives unwilling to compromise on the public option – formed in response to Baucus' bipartisan-minded "Coalition of the Willing."

Yesterday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to Mr. Obama restating that "its members cannot support final passage of any health care reform bill that does not include a robust public plan option, akin to Medicare, operating alongside the private plans." The CPC is the largest non-party caucus in Congress and has nearly 80 members.

The letter was sent in response to questions that arose yesterday as to whether the Obama administration would be willing to negotiate on the public option, after White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel indicated as much in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Obama, however, quickly put out a statement -- all the way from Moscow -- reaffirming his support for the public option.