The coming healthcare debate - A real test of the President’s health?

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The coming healthcare debate - A real test of the President’s health?

16 June 2009

While you might think that the President has enough on his hands with the global financial crisis, threats from Iran and North Korea and at least two wars still demanding his attention, think again. As I write, President Obama is preparing to speak to the American Medical Association to begin what might be the biggest political test of his Presidency – healthcare. It may also be the biggest public relations challenge as well.

The task at hand involves reforming a healthcare system that costs more than any other system in the world, accounts for one of the largest portions of national GDP of any industrialized country and still fails to provide coverage to everyone. And the President and Congress have set a timetable of mere weeks in which to do it.

There is no doubt that the President and his team recognize the challenge that lies before them and the urgency of their task. As the New York Times’ Matt Bai revealed recently, the Obama team is made up of many officials who were deeply scarred by the healthcare reform battle of the Clinton Administration and are determined not to let the same mistakes be made again. One key difference in approach this time is that the President and the Administration have very deliberately left much of the debate over the details of the reform plan up to the House and Senate, rather than putting together their own plan and simply presenting it to Congress, which was one of the chief reasons that the Clinton plan failed.

The problem this time is that while it is politically wise for the President to leave the debate up to Congress, from a public relations perspective, he risks losing the debate or at the very least having it muddied by the cacophony of voices on Capitol Hill.

Already, Republicans - who couldn’t get any real traction over the appointment of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court - have been relatively successful in focusing the debate on the question of whether to create a government-run alternative to private health insurance, the specter of which might seem benign to Australians but scares most Americans who don’t want big Government further intruding into their lives.

On the whole, Democrats, who remember 1994 all too well and are worried about the political risk of getting into the debate too early, are mostly staying in the media shadows for now, which leaves the man with the 60+% approval rating to get out there and reassure the nation while convincing them of the need for healthcare reform.

As a result, the President has become the Communicator in Chief. If you turned on your computer, TV or radio last week you were likely to have seen or heard multiple Presidential sound bites from as far away as Gr een Bay, Wisconsin and Paris, France - outlining the importance and urgency of the task that he has set himself and the Congress.

It is a political reality that Congress does not like to be told what to do, so the President is wise in leaving many of the details of the reform package up to the people who have to be happy with it in the end.

From a public relations perspective however, the divisive images coming from Capitol Hill only distract from the President’s message and from the very real consensus that has been achieved by this White House and those working for healthcare reform over the years. It is an undeniably tremendous achievement that we are all now talking about how to reform healthcare, rather than whether to reform healthcare.

At some point the President has to outline more than just his broad desire for healthcare reform. He needs to give the Congress and the nation some direction and some reassurances, especially when they are already worried about the nation’s fiscal health. Perhaps by the time you read this, we’ll have heard it but it will only be the beginning of the debate and the public relations campaign to come.