STAFF EDIT: Handling health care debates

Washington D.C.’s handling of American health care reformation has not proceeded the way President Barack Obama promised it would in his State of the Union address. Debates and discussion have been kept under wraps and pushed behind closed doors, and corresponding criticism from the right at the GOP House Issues Conference in store last month stopped Obama in his tracks. The president said he would ensure that health care negotiations were televised to keep Americans informed, but no amount of channel-changing has brought the public any further into the loop &-&- proposals have remained the stuff of bewilderment and mystery to most.

Amid the back-and-forth retorts and argument that were standard of a feisty Obama and the House Republicans at the Baltimore meeting, the president admitted his mistake and vowed to keep his promise. He could thwart off claims that he ignored ideas from the right and that his tax credits to small businesses were useless, but he could not avoid the truth that he did not follow through.

And his acknowledgement of the mistake seemed more than false promise, but something sincere Monday, when an administration official announced that a bipartisan conversation on health care later this month would be put on live TV. Obama’s vow to keep a transparent dialogue became something with a definite date and place: Feb. 25, 2010 at D.C.’s Blair House. The problem is it remains unclear if any talk on the 25th will simply start where the last left off and leave what has already been said a continuing vagary. Republicans say reports indicate the president and his project intend to careen forward.

D.C. is not the same place it was a year ago, and the fact that Democrats no longer hold a supermajority should be reason enough for debates to start from square one, or at least regenerate from a few steps back. Obama’s commitment to health care for all will not succeed if any further action continues to trend as an extension of what has already been said. Clearly, some support for the health care initiative as it stands has shifted, and subsequent discussion should take this into consideration.

Obama has said that if Congress decides to work against the plan after the 25th, when all the facts are on the table and everyone is informed, the American people “can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not.” But it doesn’t sound like all the facts will be on the table, and if the televised debates pick up where they left off, Americans will be in the same place they are now: wondering what the hell is going on.