Union Blues

President Obama is straddling another tough issue with his health reform, one that threatens to alienate a core base of support.

In a CNN interview aired Sunday, the president says he's talking to unions about a Democratic plan to tax high-end insurance packages, the so-called gold-plated or Cadillac plans. The idea is ticking off labor supporters, who happen to be strong proponents of his health reform.

“I've been honest with them about it," Obama told John King on CNN’s State of the Union.

"What I've said is, is that we want to make sure that guys are protected, guys and gals who’ve got a good benefit, that they are protected, but we also want to make sure that we're using our health dollars wisely," the president said.

Obama defended the tax and tried to shift the focus back to the insurance companies who offer high-end plans that supposedly encourage high use of medical services. The problem with his argument is that the insurers say they'll pass along any tax to their customers, which will hit the union folks.

"I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don't make people healthier is part of the way that we're going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term,” Obama said.

The proposal isn't flying with labor bosses.

Teamsters Union President James P. Hoffa is pushing Democrats to kill the idea in the Senate and instead tax wealthy individuals to pay for reform, the Wall Street Journal reports.

"It's just a left-handed way to have taxes on health-care benefits," Mr. Hoffa told the Journal in a story that appeared Saturday.

The president's comments were part of a media blitz Sunday to sell his reform. Obama used the exposure to defend other controversial aspects, such as a mandate that everyone gets insurance. The mandate is not a tax on individuals, the president insists.

He again stated that illegal aliens would not be insured under any reform and he defended the idea of a government-run health program to cover the uninsured. In multiple interviews, he tried to brush off questions that racism was driving the debate on health care.

Most of the questions and answers Sunday were addressed previously. In fact the most newsworthy aspect of the Sunday talk show rounds was that Obama did an unprecedented five interviews, all conducted Friday, with ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Univision.

Predictably, Republicans criticize the media barrage and say no GOP minds are being changed by the president's TV appearances. But it's the Democrats and their core supporters, including labor, that Obama needs to convince at this point. He has one more stop on his health care TV show tour: the Late Show with David Letterman Monday night.

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Brett Chase covers health care for Portfolio.com and writes the blog Heavy Doses.