Why Not, Wyden?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA may be facing tacit opposition to his
planned health care reform over the coming months from an unlikely
source: Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. While Obama supports a
national public health insurance option, Wyden has so far refused to do
so, and his reluctance is creating tension among Democrats in Oregon
and across the country.

Last Tuesday, June 2, the president directed the chairmen of two
Senate committees he has charged with crafting health care reform to
focus their efforts on a plan that includes a national “public health
insurance option operating alongside private plans.”

“This will give [Americans] a better range of choices, make the
health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies
honest,” Obama wrote in a letter to Senator Edward Kennedy of
Massachusetts (chairman of the Senate committee on health, education,
labor, and pensions) and Senator Max Baucus of Montana (chairman of the
Senate finance committee).

Meanwhile Senator Wyden, who also sits on Senator Baucus’ finance
committee, seems to disagree with President Obama on the national
public health insurance option, which Wyden’s 2006 bipartisan health
care reform bill excludes.

Wyden’s bill, the Healthy Americans Act, was co-sponsored by
Republican Utah Senator Robert Bennett, and will serve alongside the
president’s letter as a basis for the finance committee’s discussions
on health care reform. Senator Bennett is on record saying he will
oppose any health reform with a national public insurance option and
Wyden’s office has cited bipartisanship as a reason not to support the
public insurance option. Nevertheless, Wyden’s reluctance to support an
idea now explicitly favored by the president has some influential
Democrats concerned.

“Bipartisanship is a great thing,” said former chairman of the
Democratic National Committee Howard Dean last Friday, June 5, at a
health care town hall at Portland Community College on N Killingsworth,
organized by Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer. “But I do not think
bipartisanship is the end. I think it’s the means, and if we have to
sacrifice a great health care bill to get bipartisanship then it’s time
to throw bipartisanship over the side.”

Dean even called on Wyden by name when asked what the audience could
do to make a national public health insurance option a reality.

“Ron Wyden,” he said. “We don’t know where he’s gonna be on this
yet. And you can push him very hard on this and you should. The clear,
focused message is that there must be a public insurance option… that
this is the price of public support.”

Unlike Dean, Wyden’s fellow Oregon Democratic Senator and
congressmen have so far been noticeably silent when it comes to
criticizing Wyden’s plan in public, despite their support of a national
public health insurance option.

“Senator [Jeff] Merkley supports a national public option that would
be open to all Americans,” says Merkley’s spokeswoman, Julie Edwards,
when asked what her boss thinks of Wyden’s plan. “I’ll leave it at
that.”

“I think people will speak for themselves,” said Blumenauer after
last week’s town hall when asked why he wouldn’t criticize Wyden’s plan
directly. “I’m not trying to pinpoint anybody or call anybody out.”

“I think we’re just seeing the other federal elected officials defer
to the senior elected official in the state,” says Don Loving,
spokesman for the Oregon chapter of the American Federation of State,
County, and Municipal Employees, which has run radio ads criticizing
Wyden’s plan over recent weeks. “They don’t want to trash the senior
Senator from this state. If it was [former Republican Oregon Senator]
Gordon Smith still in office I’m sure they’d be freer with their
criticism. Dean is not an elected official in the state of Oregon, so
he feels much freer to criticize the senior Democrat,” Loving says.

Wyden’s office responds by saying the Senator is “open” to the idea
of a national public option “as long as it is responsibly
financed.”

“The president has said that he wants a public option and Senator
Wyden has said on many occasions that he is open to a public option,”
says Wyden’s chief of staff, Josh Kardon, stopping short of expressing
Wyden’s actual support for the idea, but adding: “Of course he is
sincere. Words mean something.”

Responding to Dean’s criticism, Kardon says: “Mr. Dean is a great
politician, but I’m virtually certain he has never once talked to
Senator Wyden about health care.”

When asked whether Wyden’s fellow Oregon Democrats may have been
reluctant to criticize him for the reasons alleged by Loving, Kardon
responds: “That’s a rather dark view.

“I think he has earned respect from his colleagues because no one
has worked harder on health reform for over 30 years,” Kardon
continues. “And they may not fully agree with him but they know that
he’s going to do the right thing.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Wyden’s
plan by press time.