Obama's healthcare road show: Part II

by Michael Muskal and updated

President Barack Obama will take to the road this week to sell his healthcare insurance overhaul to the American people, whom polls show remain dubious about the package.

Obama is scheduled to travel to Iowa City, Iowa, on Thursday, the White House announced. By then, it is expected that he will have signed the already Senate-passed healthcare overhaul legislation that the House passed on Sunday.

Many probably woke up this morning to the headlines of the historic House vote and thought that healthcare, which has blasted at high decibels through the body politic, could now fade into background noise.

Not a chance in this midterm election year, and not even likely in the runup leading to the presidential election cycle of 2012.

"I assume the president will talk about health care for a long time,'' Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today, "but the president has over the course of the past many weeks, even as the legislative agenda has been focused on getting health care done, which we did last night, the president also... has been working on a number of other issues that are at the forefront and that we'll have an opportunity to talk about.

"I have no doubt that we'll be on the road extensively in the fall as it relates to health care reform and as it relates to helping those that supported health care last night and supporting Democrats, even some that didn't.''

First will come Obama's formal bill-signing ceremony, tentatively set for Tuesday -- a late-morning signing, possibly on the South Lawn, if the rain lets up here. That could be the same day that the Senate begins its work on a package of amendments, also passed by the House, and whose passage has been promised by Senate Democratic leaders.

Politically, Senate Democrats will have to make their pledge good or the party's cocktail mixers will become very uncomfortable. Look to Republicans to try to make the Senate battle as long and as dilatory as possible in the hopes of keeping the healthcare issue feisty and politically alive.

Republicans have read the polls and know that Americans are leery of the bill. But Democrats, who read just as many polls, know that Americans have said they liked most of the parts of the healthcare package, but were dismayed by the overall bill and the process by which it has been passed.

Hence, Obama's trip back to Iowa which gave life to his presidential aspirations -- it was the Iowa caucuses in early 2008, remember, that launched an "audacious'' campaign.

"Thursday the president will visit Iowa City, where he outlined a grassroots health care reform plan in 2007 and have a chance to talk about what this legislation means for the small businesses... for families with children who are labeled by insurance companies to suffer from a preexisting condition, or to talk about what this means for seniors who will finally get help with covering the cost of their prescription drugs if they happen to fall into what's commonly known as the doughnut hole in Medicare Part D,'' Gibbs said today.

Obama has already made more than 50 speeches to sell healthcare reform, but this one will be a bit of a victory lap.

The president will likely remind people of the historic nature of healthcare reform, having simmered on the public burner for a century. He will also stress his favorite selling points - the consumer issues that limit predatory insurance company practices.

Like all Democrats this election year, he will talk about government projections that the bill will cut the federal deficit by more than $1.3 trillion over 20 years - a pitch to those conservatives and independents worried about the effect of spending on future generations.

In an ironic bipartisan display, Democrats and Republicans are united in using healthcare reform to raise campaign funds for this and future campaigns. Expect that to accelerate as the elections draw close.

Even after the dust settles from this battle in Congress, there will be lawsuits galore, by individuals and states, challenging the constitutionality of the measure that requires most Americans to purchase insurance. That alone will keep the political mill churning.