Union frustrated with Obama on Senate health bill

WASHINGTON — The head of a politically powerful union voiced deep disappointment Thursday over President Barack Obama’s concessions to get health care overhaul through the Senate this year but stopped short of urging Democrats to kill the bill.

In an open letter to 2.1 million union members, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, said he hopes a government health insurance option and other elements valued by liberals but likely to be missing from the Senate bill can be restored during negotiations with the House.

“President Obama must remember his own words from the campaign,” Stern wrote in a letter posted on the union’s Web site. “His call of ‘Yes We Can’ was not just to us, not just to the millions of people who voted for him, but to himself.

“Our challenge … to the president, to the Senate, and to the House of Representatives is to fight,” Stern continued. “Now, more than ever, all of us must stand up … and fight like hell to deliver real and meaningful reform to the American people.”

However, Stern did not echo former Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean’s call to scrap the legislation.

Stern’s letter fueled a vigorous debate on the political left on what to do over what liberals perceive as a rapidly shrinking health care bill. Gone is the government insurance plan modeled on Medicare. So is the fallback, the option of allowing aging Baby Boomers to buy into Medicare. The major benefits of the bill won’t start for three or four years, and then they’ll be delivered through private insurance companies.

Some middle-class people will not get enough federal help from the government to be able to afford their premiums.

“If I were a senator, I would not vote for the current health care bill,” Dean wrote in an opinion piece published Thursday by The Washington Post. “The winners in this bill are insurance companies; the American taxpayer is about to be fleeced in a situation that dwarfs even what happened at AIG.” The insurance industry opposes the legislation.

Top administration officials fired back at Dean. His assertions about the bill are “predicated on a bunch of erroneous conclusions,” said White House political strategist David Axelrod. Health reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle got on the phone with Dean and addressed his objections point by point, but “he simply didn’t want to hear that critique,” complained Axelrod, who was interviewed on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe.”

Moving to head off a revolt from the heart of his own party, Obama has been going out of his way to praise the Senate bill. It would cover an additional 30 million people, outlaw denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and put into motion a range of experiments that may yet succeed in slowing the growth of health care costs. In meetings with Democratic senators, Obama acknowledged the legislation isn’t perfect and doesn’t have everything he would want. But he urged them to pass it, and keep working to make it better in future years.

The call to move ahead resonates with some liberals, veterans of many legislative struggles involving compromise and incremental progress.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, an outspoken critic of the insurance industry, said Democrats need to be pragmatic about the health care bill.

“We have had to make painful compromises,” he acknowledged. “But mark my words, decades from now people will not remember the twists and turns of debate. What they will remember is that President Obama achieved his No. 1 domestic priority and that Congress passed a big, historic bill.”

A liberal advocacy group on health Thursday endorsed the Senate bill. Families USA supported the public plan insurance option, but said in a letter to Senate leaders it accepts the fact that the idea lacks sufficient support. “The failure to enact health insurance reform would have disastrous consequences for America’s families and businesses,” wrote executive director Ron Pollack.

Obama’s exhortations have yet to produce the 60 votes Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., needs to overcome Republican delaying tactics and push the bill through the Senate. Reid said Thursday the Senate will finish the bill before leaving for the Christmas holidays, but behind the scenes he was struggling to get firm commitments from all the members of his caucus.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., remained the lone known holdout, his primary concern that abortion funding restrictions in the bill are too lax. His spokesman said Nelson has other problems with the bill as well, ranging from nursing home cuts to a new long term care program. If those are not addressed in some fashion, he said Nelson may not be able to vote for it.

By SAM HANANEL (AP)
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Ken Thomas contributed to this story.