White House: Healthcare pact an ‘environmental shift’

The trillions in healthcare cost savings agreed to by companies and announced by the Obama administration this week signals an “environmental shift” that will make healthcare reform more politically possible, the White House asserted Tuesday.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs continued to tout the estimated $2 trillion in savings volunteered by insurers and healthcare providers but indicated that it may be more important that those players are now at the table.

{mosads}”I think that’s a pretty big environmental shift that makes healthcare more attainable,” Gibbs said during Tuesday’s press briefing, comparing the Obama administration’s experience to the Clinton administration’s failed attempt to reform healthcare in the early 1990s. “Are you going to have a fight on the airwaves as you did 15 or 16 years ago, or are you going to come together and have a discussion at the table?”

The Clinton effort was torpedoed when industry groups and conservative figures teamed to wage a successful public campaign against reform.

Gibbs said that while the president has been engaged with lawmakers’ efforts in the House and Senate to reform healthcare, he has not been trying to manage the day-to-day negotiations over a reform package.

“I think you’re going to see over the course of many weeks legislation move through multiple committees, both houses of Congress,” Gibbs said. “I think obviously the president will remain involved and engaged, but we’re not going to get into scorekeeping.”

While the White House declined to engage specific proposals on the table, it did indicate that “an increase for taxes on the very wealthy” is on the table to finance healthcare reform, along with a variety of other initiatives.

“What I think what is largely being discussed on Capitol Hill is a preservation of the employer-based system,” Gibbs said, adding that no firm timetable for reform is in place, and that reform would be a “many-weeks process.”