WASHINGTON — In a sign of how the political climate is shifting, powerful business interests that once teamed up to defeat Democratic healthcare plans are joining with labor unions and other unlikely allies to advocate extending medical insurance to millions of Americans.
Among the champions of change is the trade group representing the nation's leading health insurance firms. That industry developed the "Harry and Louise" television ad campaign, which helped turn public opinion against the universal healthcare plan proposed by President Clinton and then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1994.
So devastating was the defeat that Washington politicians have hesitated to offer comprehensive proposals for change since then. Although Democrats talked of healthcare costs in the 2006 campaign, they have offered only modest proposals despite winning control of both chambers of Congress. Republican governors have offered some of the most ambitious plans recently, but GOP leadership in Washington has been muted.
Now, nongovernmental coalitions of seemingly strange bedfellows are stepping into the vacuum.
Today, the president of the Service Employees International Union will stand with the director of the Business Roundtable, which represents the nation's leading corporations, to announce one campaign to overhaul healthcare.
On Thursday, private health insurance companies will join with doctors' organizations and health-activist groups on the left to announce a plan for universal coverage.
"This week marks a kind of tipping point," said Karen Ignagni, who represents the health insurance industry in Washington. Members of the trade group she now leads -- America's Health Insurance Plans -- produced the Harry and Louise commercials, in which a middle-aged couple expressed alarm about the prospect of government meddling in their personal decisions about healthcare.
"The health insurance problem has been with us for decades," Ignagni said. "With all these different efforts, you are seeing a consensus emerge that the time for action is now."
Major questions remain about how a healthcare overhaul program would work -- including how it would be financed and who would participate. But broad agreement on the need for action is important, because the groups involved might have the political clout and lobbying muscle to push a plan through Congress.
