Health-care law’s problems test loyalty of Democrats in Congress

The political fallout from the botched launch of the health-care law is presenting congressional Democrats with one of their toughest tests of party loyalty in the five years of the Obama administration.

House Republicans are expected to pass a bill Friday that could dramatically undermine the law. And after years of trying to impale the initiative, GOP leaders are hopeful that the political turmoil over the rollout will provide them the support of a sizable bloc of Democrats.

In the Senate, moderate Democrats facing reelection battles next year have assembled legislative alternatives designed to fix some of the problems and provide political cover for themselves.

Into this caustic mix stepped President Obama with his announcement Thursday that he will allow insurance companies to continue offering plans that do not meet the new law’s requirements.

The move was a direct response to the political eruptions that followed news that insurance carriers were canceling policies after the president had promised that people would be able to keep them if they so desired. “If you like your doctor, you keep your doctor” became something of a mantra for Obama.

At one point during what amounted to an hour-long mea culpa, Obama even apologized on behalf of the many Democratic lawmakers who repeated those assurances to the voters.

“They were making representations based on what I told them and what this White House and our administrative staff told them, and so it’s not on them, it’s on us,” Obama said in the White House Briefing Room.

As the president finished answering questions, the White House’s full-court press continued on Capitol Hill. Denis McDon­ough, Obama’s chief of staff, led several senior officials into nearly four hours of meetings.

First, they ducked in with the 55-member Senate Democratic caucus. They tried to calm the group and pleaded for time to try to repair the damage without any legislative interference, pledging to fix the federal Web site that opened to disastrous reviews on Oct. 1.

McDonough and his group then darted across the Capitol and down into a basement room where nearly 200 House Democrats had assembled, delivering the same message.

In particular, they urged House Democrats to not support Friday’s GOP bill, which would allow people to keep their old health insurance by extending the “grandfather provisions” of the health-care law to include plans purchased after the law was adopted in 2010. Democrats worry that that would keep millions of people out of the exchanges and decimate the act.

A large number of such defections would be a policy blow to the law, but it would be an even more significant political gut punch to the president. The White House on Thursday night said the president would veto the GOP bill if it came to his desk.

For now, the White House appears to have calmed the nerves of anxious Democrats, but Obama’s allies warned that the support was not open-ended. Instead, Obama’s once-loyal supporters on Capitol Hill gave a qualified, trust-but-verify commitment.