WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and congressional allies signaled Wednesday they may try to scale back health care overhaul to keep parts of it alive in the wake of a stinging rebuke from the Senate election in Massachusetts.
A simpler, less ambitious bill emerged as an alternative. No decisions have been made, lawmakers said, but they laid out an approach that could include limiting the ability of insurance companies to deny coverage to people with medical problems, allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ policies, helping small businesses and low-income people pay premiums, and changing Medicare to encourage payment for quality care instead of sheer volume of services.
Obama said the election results wouldn’t sour his interest in passing a health care bill.
“Now, I could have said, ‘Well, we’ll just do what’s safe, we’ll just take on those things that are completely noncontroversial,’ ” Obama said in an interview with ABC News. “The problem is, the things that are noncontroversial end up being the things that don’t solve the problem.”
But the goal of covering nearly all Americans would be put off further into the future.
Obama urged lawmakers not to try to jam a bill through but to scale the proposal down to what he called “those elements of the package that people agree on.”
“We know that we need insurance reform, that the health-insurance companies are taking advantage of people,” the president said. “We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up. And we know that small businesses are going to need help.”
One potential Republican convert for health care legislation remained an enigma. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who has been in regular contact with Obama, roundly criticized some Democrats’ hard push to pass their bill. But she would not rule out voting for something in the end.
Asked if the Democratic bills are dead, Snowe responded, “I never say anything is dead, but clearly I think they have to revisit the entire issue.”
Some Democrats weren’t ready for that, despite the president’s new words.
One option still alive and stirring strong emotions called for the House to quickly pass the Senate version of the broader bill — simply accepting it without another Senate vote and bypassing the problem created by the loss of the Massachusetts seat to Republican Scott Brown. Despite some House members’ deep misgivings, administration officials were working behind the scenes on that idea, which would be the fastest and cleanest route to getting a bill to Obama, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely describe private talks.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders were gauging support for the idea among liberals and moderates. The initial reaction was not encouraging.
“If you ran that Senate bill right now on the House floor, I’ll bet you would not get 100 votes for it,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich.
It would take 218 House votes to pass the legislation.
As the day wore on, those urging moderation seemed to be winning the argument.
“We’re not going to rush into anything,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “We will wait until the new senator arrives.”
