Axelrod Says Health Reform Supporters Are on the 'One Yard Line'

Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod said today that supporters of health care reform are "right on the one-yard line" to push through passage of the legislation now that the Senate Democratic leadership says it has the 60 votes necessary to pass their version this week.

Axelrod offered that optimistic prediction, when asked on CNN's State of the Union to describe progress with a football analogy, even though the Senate bill still would have to be reconciled with House legislation that has provisions that didn't pass muster in the upper chamber, and in the face of numerous public opinion polls that showed opposition and anxiety to the chances being discussed on Capitol Hill.

Acknowledging the thorny negotiations yet ahead should the Senate as expected put the stamp of approval on its legislation, Axelrod said, "We're way deep in the red zone...We're right on the one-yard line...That does not mean that we're in."

"I think we're going to get it done," Axelrod said on NBC's Meet the Press. "I think people understand that this is a historic crossroads. Seven presidents have tried to pass comprehensive health insurance reform, seven presidents have failed ...We're on the doorstep of getting it done."

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, also on CNN, took his own crack at sports-talk,saying "Our best player is the American people, so we're in the fourth quarter. This is far from over. The House and Senate bills are in many ways irreconcilable."

Graham appeared to be referring to the latest round of public opinion polls showing opposition to the plans working their way through Congress, a growing belief among those who have health coverage that they will be no better or worse off under the proposed changes, and increased anxiety about what the cost will mean to the federal deficit.

Last week, a Washington Post/ABC News poll said the reform proposals were opposed by 51 percent to 44 percent, a modest increase in opposition over last month. A Pew Research Center survey said Americans opposed the proposals as they understood them by 47 percent to 34 percent. A USA/Today Gallup poll said 46 percent of the public would advise their representative to vote against a reform bill while 44 percent would urge them to support it.

Majorities in the Post/ABC poll believed that, if legislation passes, their own health care costs would rise and quality of care would not improve. That finding was also reflected in a George Washington University Battleground poll and a Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

On NBC, Axelrod said, "I think that there is a big anomaly in the polls that's worth discussing. When you ask people do you support the bill that's working through congress, the president's bill and so on, they give you that result (opposition to the overall bill). When you describe what's in the bill, when you describe the fact that there are all kinds of protections for patients and consumers within the system... when you talk about all of those things people are very strongly supportive. But that's not the picture they've gotten through this kind of narrow debate we've seen in television and Congress."

One of the hurdles the White House and Democratic leaders are facing with a House-Senate conference looming is backlash from liberal Democrats who believe the Senate gave away too much, such as on providing a public option for insurance, in putting the necessary 60 votes together to fight off filibusters.

Former Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean, who ignited some of that pushback with a Washington Post opinion piece last week, repeated on NBC that if he were a senator, "I would certainly not vote for this bill if this were the final product," particularly if it did not have some kind of public option as an alternative to private insurers. The Senate bill instead provides for consumers to shop for and buy coverage through health exchanges.

"We have committed in this last week of unseemly scrambling for votes...to go down a path in this country where private insurance will be the way that we achieve universal health care," Dean said. "That means we're going to have a 30 year battle with the insurance industry every time when we try to control costs and try to get them to do things. It is not a coincidence that insurance company stocks, health insurance company stocks, hit a 52 year high on Friday. They must know something that the rest of us don't."

Dean said "we have been very disappointed" that the White House didn't push hard to keep the public option in the Senate bill.

Dean also said that rejection in the Senate of a measure to allow Americans over 55 to buy into Medicare will make the 2010 midterm elections a tougher environment for Democrats.

He said, given the complexity of the bill, "Republicans will make it a target and we'll have a hard time explaining it" because some provisions in the bill don't go into effect until 2014. If Medicare had been expanded, Dean said, four to five million Americans would have been able to take advantage of it within months of the legislation's signing and "that would have gone a long way to making sure the American people understood because their neighbors would have health insurance that didn't have death panels, where you were allowed to choose your doctors, and where all this Republican nonsense propaganda would have been put to bed by the American people."

Axelrod acknowledged the bill was not "perfect," but said, "There is no major piece of legislation that's ever been passed in this country that doesn't include compromise."

Republicans on the talk shows had a lot of fun with a provision put in the bill as part of the effort to nail down Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson as the 60th vote. The measure provides that the federal government would pay the state's Medicaid costs in full if the legislation passes. Medicaid is usually funded by a mix of federal and state dollars.

Sen. Jon Kyl, whose party has been criticized by Democrats for trying to stall the legislation through tactics such as forcing the reading of the bill and amendments, said on ABC's This Week that "we found what the price of that was as we began to read the bill ...when the senator from Nebraska on page 98 of the bill gets his state specifically exempted from having to pay the increased Medicaid costs associated with bill."

Republican Sen. John McCain chuckled at the mention of Nelson on Fox News Sunday saying, "I'll let the American people judge the fact that Medicaid costs will not be borne by the state of Nebraska forever, and that puts an added burden on all the other states, including mine."