A Health Care Bay of Pigs? - WSJ.com's Political Diary

Stuck on Health Care

President Obama is getting a clear message from his allies that he may have to scale back his health care goals in order to win passage from Congress. Even his own Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told NBC's "Meet the Press:" "Our Democratic friends are having a hard time selling this to their own members, a very difficult time."

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, one of Mr. Obama's earliest supporters in his 2008 campaign, has also weighed in with some advice not to demand too much from Congress, based on his own experience inheriting implementation of his state's "universal" health care plan -- which was passed in 2005. Mr. Patrick recently had to impose cuts in the program, which has seen large cost overruns.

"The untold story about the Massachusetts experiment has been that we finally recognized that there were more than just the usual two choices, which were to have a perfect solution or no solution at all," Gov. Patrick told ABC News at the National Governors Association meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi. "There is a cautionary tale for Washington because people are going to fret over a perfect solution and because there isn't one, we're going to get stuck -- or we are at risk of being stuck."

Concern about the floundering Obama health care plan is rooted in memories of HillaryCare, the Clinton administration's bold attempt to remake health care in 1993. First Lady Hillary Clinton was offered several compromise solutions that would have gotten her much, but not all, of what she wanted. She insisted on "all or nothing." The result was a plan that never made it to a Congressional vote and resulted in a political debacle for Democrats.

Mr. Obama is smart enough to scale back his ambitions to win passage of something from Congress and then declare "victory." From the comments of his allies, I detect the first effort on their part to prepare liberal diehards for the fact they may end up with less than a full loaf this year.
-- John Fund