Obama Expected To Hit on Health Care in State of the Union Address
President Obama is expected to primarily focus on an agenda to create more jobs in his State of the Union address tonight, but he also is expected to discuss how he hopes to salvage health care reform after Senate Democrats lost their 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority, the AP/San Francisco Chronicle reports.
According to aides, Obama will give new details about how he plans to revive the overhaul initiative (Feller, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, 1/27). In addition, aides said that Obama will accept responsibility -- though not necessarily blame -- for not quickly delivering a reform bill, which he promised to do one year ago.
However, the aides added that Obama will not concede to criticism from reform opponents, who have said that his priorities do not match those of U.S. residents and that the president should have focused on the economy over the previous year (Zeleny, New York Times, 1/27).
In an interview with ABC News earlier this week, Obama said that health reform has been "an ugly process," adding that during his address he will "own up to the fact that the process didn't run the way I ideally would like it to and that we have to move forward in a way that recaptures that sense of opening things up more," so that U.S. residents can more closely track overhaul negotiations (Babington, AP/Chicago Tribune, 1/27).
Obama's comments on health reform in his State of the Union speech are still uncertain. The AP/Chronicle reports that as of Tuesday night, the health care section of his speech was still under development (AP/San Francisco Chronicle, 1/27). This is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.