Obama v. health insurers

President Obama has picked few fights since his election.

He’s courted Republicans with tax cuts in the stimulus package, and conservative columnists with friendly words at George Will’s house.

The new president has trodden a similar path with interest groups.

He has signaled in speeches the he wants to work with the banking industry to fix the financial sector, and in Federal Reserve of New York President Timothy Geithner picked a Wall Street favorite as his Treasury secretary.

Obama has even taken pains to calm business groups on labor law. Asked about the Employee Free Choice Act in an interview with The Washington Post last week, Obama said there may be ways to help unions without angering the business community. Those words must have soothed the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups mounting an aggressive lobbying campaign against the so-called card-check bill.

One sector stands out as an exception to Obama’s charm offensive: health insurers. So far, Obama doesn’t appear ready to play nice with this traditional boogeyman of the Democratic Party.

As Jeffrey Young reported in The Hill last week, Obama and congressional Democrats have opened one front in the battle for comprehensive health reform with the insurance industry, which was one of the groups most responsible for crushing President Clinton’s hopes for the same goal.

Obama has long been a critic. In a May 2007 stump speech in Iowa, he said insurance companies would have a seat at the table on healthcare reform, but pointedly added insurers “don’t get to buy every chair.”

More recently, in a Jan. 11 interview on ABC, Obama singled out Medicare Advantage, under which private insurance companies get government subsidies to help Medicare recipients, as an example of “programs that don’t work.” Obama said the program doesn’t make people healthier.

Senior Democrats who will have major roles in reforming healthcare use tougher language in describing insurers. Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), who will be one of the lead authors of health reform legislation in the House, recently said health insurance companies are “the easiest to roll” on legislation “because nobody likes insurance companies.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told The Hill earlier this month that “Medicare Advantage is gone.”

While Obama doesn’t go that far, the olive branches offered to the financial and business sectors are not as apparent. All of this suggests health insurance lobbyists should feel targeted.

Some observers might have questioned Obama’s resolve to tackle healthcare reform amid what is expected to be one of the worst recessions in recent history.

His appointment of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) as a health czar and his tough talk with insurers suggests the president is serious about changing healthcare sooner rather than later. While Democrats have acknowledged that their healthcare legislation will not be fully paid for, they are looking for cost savings. And it is clear they have health insurance companies in their crosshairs.