Barack Obama has not given much in the way of specifics for health-care reform. Few policies have been nonnegotiable and virtually none have been dictated. The exception is a number that was neither nonnegotiable nor dictated, but was received on the Hill as if it was both, and has come to dominate the health-care reform process: $900 billion.Ezra reports that this didn't come out of the blue but was rather a reaction at the White House to the tumult during August when members of the administration wanted to radically roll back the scope of the health care plan.The number sprang from Obama's September speech laying out his own plan on health-care reform. "Add it all up," he said before a joint session of Congress, "and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years." The plan he proposed, however, did not mention the price tag, and the president did not include any specifics about how that price tag was reached. Nor did the president's language actually set a hard ceiling. "Around $900 billion," when you're talking about internal modeling for a plan that the Congressional Budget Office hasn't seen, is not the same thing as a $900 billion limit.
This was not like Bill Clinton waving his pen and promising to veto any bill that did not reach universal coverage. But that's how it was understood on the Hill. "It made things complicated," sighed Rep. George Miller. "We were working off of one track and then we had to switch."