Obama pledges to improve health law, but Dems offer few details

President Obama and Democrats are offering few specifics when it comes to changing the nation’s healthcare law.

Democrats are trying to recast themselves as a party that’s
listening to voters after their midterm shellacking, one that is willing to alter
Obama’s signature domestic achievement in order to improve it.

{mosads}Obama, in his State of the Union address, expressed a
willingness to tackle medical malpractice reform, and also repeated his call to
eliminate a tax-reporting provision deeply unpopular with business.

“Let me be the first to say that anything can be improved,”
Obama said Tuesday. “If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making
care better or more affordable, I am eager to work with you.”

Hundreds of healthcare advocates will hear more from the
president when he addresses Families USA’s annual meeting on Friday morning.

Beyond addressing the 1099 tax filing requirement, however,
Obama and other Democrats have been vague in saying what changes they could
actually accept.

The administration’s top health official, Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has so far not proposed any new ideas for
compromise.

“We’re happy to talk about other areas that certainly can be
improved as we move along,” she told The Hill before the president’s address.

And pressed by Ways and Means Republicans on Wednesday to
identify changes to the law that the White House would support beyond the
“1099” tax provision and tort reform, economic adviser Austan Goolsbee was
equally reticent.

“I would say that the president’s open to working with you
if you identify other items,” he said.

Republicans, predictably, say they’re unimpressed.

“It’s only after this disastrous bill has become law that
the president say he’s now interested in making it better, even as he belittles
the legitimate concerns so many Americans continue to have about it,” said
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.).

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) grilled Sebelius on medical
malpractice during a Senate Health panel hearing Thursday and requested that
she submit for the record the parameters of what the White House is open to
considering.

“We’re going to find out if the trial lawyers run this
place,” McCain said, “or the American people.”

Even on 1099, the administration has declined to offer a way
forward on the provision’s most controversial aspect: its $19 billion price
tag.

A few Democrats have offered specific proposals to change
the healthcare law, though these changes mostly tinker around the edges.

Rep. Robert Andrews (N.J.), the top Democrat on the
Education and Labor Health subcommittee, listed several potential improvements
in addition to the tax reporting requirement: fixing the small-business tax
credits so they can be used to cover owners’ children if they’re employees;
clearer definitions of who qualifies as a full-time employee for purposes of
the employer mandate; and creating incentives for states to band together and
create regional health exchanges starting in 2014.

“I have talked to some Republicans about these things,”
Andrews told The Hill, “and I think when the temperature drops, it’s quite
possible we can do these things.”

Some Republicans have used Obama’s stated willingness to
change the law to push GOP replacement ideas, such as eliminating a new
Medicare advisory board outside Congress’s power.

“We’d love to repeal [the law], but we also want to tweak it
in the meantime,” Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said Wednesday. “One great step in
doing that is removing these awful bureaucrats who are going to be overly paid
in order to determine what goods and services people are going to get in the
healthcare system.”

Health activists listening to Obama on Friday are likely to
hear something closer to a victory celebration than a call for compromise,
judging from the tone of Democratic lawmakers who spoke at the convention on
Thursday.

“The message to our fellow Americans must be loud and
clear,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) told the advocates on Thursday. “This new law
has important new benefits and protections. Don’t let the Republicans take them
away!”