By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau
There were two meetings in Washington D.C. on the health care system over the last week or so that could hardly have been more dissimilar in character.
A majority of the members of the National Governors Association met a week ago Sunday to talk about attempts in their states to lower health care costs and increase the portion of their residents who have health insurance. For an hour and a half governors, without scripts or aides prompting them, talked on the fly about ideas that worked – and failed — in each of their jurisdictions.
Their conclusion was that something has to be done about the cost of health care which is putting at risk the financial future of many of their states. Not surprisingly, many of them also said that the states should have more say in the design of a health care reform effort and more leeway in its implementation. However the governors – who disagree about some aspects of health care system changes, for instance the need for a public option – steered largely clear of those portions of the discussion, concentrating instead on what they had learned about the practical implementation of health care programs in their states.
Then, last Thursday President Barack Obama held a bipartisan meeting with members of Congress on the stalled health care reform effort. The focus of that six-hour televised meeting was the points of disagreement between the sides, with Republicans sticking to their calls for a new bill to be drafted from the ground up while Obama and the other Democrats made the point that while there may be objections to the bills that have passed the Senate and House, taking no action would be at least as unappealing.
Why the differences in those two meetings?
For one thing the governors for the most part are not in direct competition with each other. If something that works in Massachusetts can be replicated in another state neither governor – even if they are of different political parties – loses. That means the states’ chief executives act more like a club dinner than a melee and they have less to fear from conceding that someone else had a good idea – and less to gain by shooting it down.
And the governors come from such diverse constituencies that their views on particular pieces of health care reform don’t break evently along party lines. Despite his opposition to a national public insurance option Republican Gov. James Douglas, who has agreed to policies that encourage more Vermonters enrolling in government insurance, can sound more interested in government involvement in health care reform than many of his Democratic counterparts.
It’s also a function of the way the National Governors Association works. The group is structured to share power among governors of different parties, and only takes official positions that are reached by consensus.
Congress, on the other hand, is structured to function by majority and after the meeting last Thursday it appears likely that for anything to happen in the way of federal health care reform it will be with a vote strictly along party lines.
Finally, whatever their political or ideological alignment, most of the governors agree in general terms on what they want for their states – more federal money to insure more people and more say for the executive offices they hold.
And such a meeting comes with something even more fun – the chance to beat up on Congress instead of their legislatures back home.
"We need to let governors lead the way," Douglas, the chairman of the National Governors Association, said in Washington D.C. "Regardless of what happens with health care reform the states are where the rubber meets the road."
After meeting with the governors last week, Obama apparently agreed.
"We’re committed to working with them in the weeks and months to come to make sure that when we get health reform done, it is in partnership with the states, where the rubber so often hits the road," he said, according to Politico.