Health care reformers look to spur change

Today’s edition kicks off a new focus by Politico’s Lobbying team on four issues: the economy; defense and security; energy and the environment; and health care. Each Tuesday until the Inauguration, we’ll have the latest news on policy and personnel, with more special coverage planned next year.

Health care groups that embraced pro-reform candidates have wasted no time transforming their massive campaign resources into lobbying drives for comprehensive health care reform.

Health Care for America Now, which by the end of the year will have spent $14.5 million since its launch in July, plans to spend $25 million next year to continue a relentless pro-reform advertising drumbeat. The money will also fund more organizers; the progressive coalition currently has 79 people on the ground in 41 states.

In January, the Service Employees International Union, an early backer of President-elect Barack Obama, will deploy thousands of volunteers and paid staff throughout the country, hoping to top the 5,000 people it enlisted to work for him during the campaign. The group will tap the contact information of the 37 million Americans who have signed up to push for health care reform while working to grow the list to 100 million.

And AARP, which didn’t endorse a candidate but has worked to raise the profile of health care reform, has launched an almost $1 million post-election advertising campaign, which includes Web video, a national advertising buy on cable news, and national and inside-the-Beltway print advertising. The seniors’ lobby is readying a bipartisan, grass-roots push that it hopes will ride the election’s momentum to successful reform.

“We expect leadership to deliver now that there’s been an election based on these issues,” said John Rother, AARP’s executive vice president of policy.

The quick pivot to lobbying is no surprise. The health care reform community has been preparing for the battle for more than a year.

Reformers are cautiously optimistic. After a Democrat-controlled government bungled health care reform 14 years ago, supporters recognize that the start of the Obama era does not guarantee success. It merely provides an opportunity.

“For 100 years, we’ve been trying to enact universal health care coverage, and we’ve failed,” said Dennis Rivera, chairman of SEIU Health Care, which represents the union’s 1.2 million health care workers.

Part of the union’s job, Rivera said, is to convince members of Congress who doubt that health care reform can succeed.

His organization provided more money and volunteers to Obama’s campaign than any other group, he said. And the union plans to redirect that intensity into health care reform.

“We intend to run this as a presidential race, and our candidate is comprehensive health care reform in the United States,” Rivera said.

The group wants Congress and Obama to craft a single reform bill that can be passed in the administration’s first 120 days. And while he wouldn’t provide a figure, Rivera said the organization plans to break its previous spending records to get the job done.

To continue growing its grass roots, SEIU and Health Care for America Now launched a $100,000 online advertising campaign on Election Night.

“You Voted for Obama. You Voted for Health Care,” the ad said, and then provided a place for readers to enter their e-mail addresses and ZIP codes.

The Health Care for America Now coalition is directing the grass-roots power of its 462 member organizations to meet with lawmakers in their home districts. The group is pushing members of Congress to join Obama and some 150 other lawmakers to sign on to the organization’s principles.

“The whole goal of this is to get something done in 2009, and we’ve got the guy in office we needed to do it. So now we’ve got to get started,” said Jacki Schechner, the group’s spokeswoman. “Our job is to be the army behind Obama, saying we can’t afford not to do health care.”

And painting health care as a critical component of righting a listing economy will be a major theme as the various groups work to ensure reform isn’t overshadowed by the economic crisis.

Can Democrats Move Past Hillarycare?

Key Senate committee Chairmen Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) are already laying the foundation for a major health care debate in the new year, but they haven’t answered one major question: What to do about Hillary?

Democrats can’t disconnect Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and the idea of universal health care. She is by far the most high-profile advocate for universal health coverage, yet she is also the living symbol of the Democrats’ highest-profile failure on the issue — the 1994 health care debacle when she was first lady.

“After the campaign, people thought she’d be a point person on health care,” said one former Clinton aide. “But now she’s nowhere. What exactly is she doing on the issue? Health care is her baby.”

To be sure, Clinton can’t jump the gun on her committee chairmen — Kennedy at Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, and Baucus at Finance — who want to start the legislating, and she has to be careful not to get too far out ahead of Obama on the issue.

“Sen. Clinton has told her HELP chairman, Sen. Kennedy, as well as [Senate Majority] Leader [Harry] Reid, that she stands ready to help President-elect Obama in any and every way she can to enact comprehensive health care reform, which she has sought for nearly two decades,” her office said in a statement.

And some Clinton folks argue that her presidential campaign — during which she forcefully articulated a vision for universal health coverage — was effective in making people forget 1994.

“Looking back on the campaign, the high-water mark for Clinton was health care — it killed the demons of 1994,” said Phil Singer, who was a Clinton spokesman during the primary campaign.

To get the legislation right, the Obama administration will first need to work behind the scenes, cooperating with Kennedy and Baucus in the Senate, as well as with key House committees.

But once the legislating seems to be on a fast track, Clinton could take a public role, should the new president want her to be an advocate for his health care program.

“She’s laying back now, but she’ll need to establish her turf,” the former Clinton aide said. “She can also go out there and take a few punches for Obama.”