Democrats cautiously embrace Obama health plan

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats cautiously embraced President Barack Obama's new health care plan as their last, best hope for enacting a comprehensive overhaul. Republicans derided the new blueprint as same as the old one.

Two days before Obama's televised health summit with Republicans and Democrats, the prospects for any bipartisan deal dimmed as the administration set the stage for pushing ahead with only Democratic support, a risky move that would require the president's political capital and elusive unity from a fractious party.

Democratic congressional leaders would have to scramble for votes, and Republicans signaled they wouldn't help.

"It should be clear by now that Americans are tired of grand schemes imposed from above," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Tuesday. "Incredibly (Democrats) still don't seem to get it." It seemed unlikely that McConnell would go along with a White House request for a simple up-or-down vote on Obama's plan, unobstructed by delaying tactics.

A year after calling on Congress to act to reform the nation's costly and inefficient health care system, Obama finally produced a plan of his own Monday. It used legislation already passed by the Senate as its starting point, making changes designed to appeal to House Democrats.

Even after months in which health care gradually turned from Obama's top domestic priority into a political albatross, Obama opted for one last attempt at full-scale legislation. It costs around $1 trillion over a decade, requires nearly everyone to be insured or pay a fine, and puts new requirements on insurance companies, including — in a new twist responding to recent rate hikes — giving the federal government authority to block big premium increases.

In the end Obama may have to settle for much less than what he proposed Monday — or nothing at all. But many Democrats said that despite all the bad-news polls and the loss of their filibuster-proof Senate supermajority in a special-election upset, it would still be better to pass a sweeping bill than make small changes or none at all.

If Obama fails on a comprehensive health care overhaul where Bill Clinton and other presidents failed before him, the chance won't come around again anytime soon.

"This is the last time out," said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. "So this is it. This is it."