See you in September

WASHINGTON-The morning after President Obama, in a nationally televised Wednesday healthcare pep rally, declared that the "stars are aligned" for healthcare reform, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee canceled its healthcare working session-for the third consecutive day.

So while the White House sees a clear starry night sky charting a course for governmental restructuring of the nation's medical system, the healthcare forecast at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue continues to be cloudy.

That's the way it has been for the last two weeks, as rhetoric fails to match reality when it comes to healthcare reform. Obama has been pouring on the public relations blitzkrieg while lawmakers cannot even agree to meet to hammer out the details.

This rhetoric versus reality dance continued Thursday afternoon. As Obama jetted off to Cleveland to stump for his sweeping ideas among average voters, Senate leaders officially ditched the August deadline. Healthcare reform, they admitted, will have to wait until the fall. The news came after too many Senate body blows, the latest being Utah Republican Orrin Hatch's leaving a bipartisan working group after discussions leaned too far to the left.

The House, where the Democrats' large majority offers the best odds for healthcare passage, is in as much legislative disarray as the Senate. Leaders there, such as House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, now are pleading with their colleagues to postpone the upcoming August recess so they can stay in Washington and finish healthcare. But House members are wary of going home having voted on mammoth healthcare changes only to get hammered by constituents in much the same way they did in July after passing a controversial climate change bill.

The fact that such large-scale healthcare reform may be on life support can be attributed to one entity, ironically headed by a Democrat: the Congressional Budget Office.

Starting last week, Democrats ramped up their pace in a furious flurry of moves aimed at swinging the healthcare pendulum back in their direction: Obama courted fence-sitting lawmakers at the White House, senators ditched bipartisanship to pass their dream $615 billion healthcare bill in a committee, and House leaders scheduled their own committee votes just two days after introducing a 1,000-page, $1.5 trillion bill.

But then CBO head Douglas Elmendorf warned Congress that current healthcare legislation, with its subsidies to help even uninsured families making $88,000, would raise costs, not lower them. For his fiscal reality check Elmendorf got an invitation to the White House for a private meeting. But the damage was done as Republicans quickly seized on the comments to retake the healthcare momentum.

Conservatives are hoping that any insistence on a government-run plan-a centerpiece of the Democrat proposal-becomes the third rail of healthcare reform. They argue that any creation of a public option starts the nation down a slippery slope that only ends with a single-payer system, where the government is the sole health-insurer.

"Americans don't want the people who brought you the Department of Motor Vehicles making life-and-death decisions for them," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said on the Senate floor during what has become an almost daily ritual of criticizing Democratic plans.

Harvard University healthcare expert Regina E. Herzlinger believes a public insurance option may be too much big government following on the heels of the $787 billion stimulus package and federal takeovers of the banking, insurance, and auto industries.

"We are getting to where a trillion dollars is like a penny," she said. "Uncle Sam's health insurance supermarket doesn't sound too good."

That is why moderate Democrats up for reelection, like Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, continue to be skeptical when it comes to Obama's rhetoric: "The devil is in the details, and we're now starting to get into some of those details," Bayh said Thursday morning on MSNBC, just hours after Obama's televised news conference. "One of which is, how do we afford this, because frankly the country is going broke."

At least 42 House Democrats are opposed to the healthcare bill, meaning that Democratic leadership lacks the 218 votes necessary to pass it. The House plan expands government programs like Medicaid and provides insurance subsidies to individuals making as much as $43,000 a year.

Under such a plan, more than 88 million Americans could lose their private, employer-based coverage, according to a just-released study commissioned by The Heritage Foundation.

The study also found that more than 103 million Americans would end up on the new government-run plan as employers opt out of continuing their existing private coverage. Meanwhile, yearly premiums for private coverage would increase by as much as $460 per person.

Despite the sobering statistics, top Democrats seem intent on pushing ahead with their version of reform-even if it is delayed. One year after the presidential elections, the political parties find themselves engaged in another race.

"Democrats will learn this is not a campaign for president," predicts Peter Nelson with the Center of the American Experiment. "This is something very personal-your healthcare. People are going to be protective of that."