WASHINGTON — President Obama signaled on Wednesday that he might be willing to scale back his proposed health care overhaul to a version that could attract bipartisan support, as the White House and Congressional Democrats grappled with a political landscape transformed by the Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race.
“I would advise that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on,” Mr. Obama said in an interview on ABC News, notably leaving near-universal insurance coverage off his list of core goals.
But it was not clear that even a stripped-down bill could get through Congress anytime soon. Throughout the day, White House officials and Democratic Congressional leaders struggled to find a viable way forward for the health care bill and to digest the reality that much of their agenda, including an energy measure and an overhaul of banking regulations, had been derailed by the outcome in Massachusetts.
Inside the White House, top aides to the president said Mr. Obama had made no decision on how to proceed, and insisted that his preference was still to win passage of a far-reaching health care measure, like the House and Senate bills, which would extend coverage to more than 30 million people by 2019.
On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders said they were weighing several options. But some lawmakers in both parties began calling for a scaled-back bill that could be adopted quickly with bipartisan support, and Mr. Obama seemed to suggest that if he could not pass an ambitious health care bill, he would be willing to settle for what he could get. In the interview with ABC, he cited two specific goals: cracking down on insurance industry practices that hurt consumers and reining in health costs.
“We know that we need insurance reform, that the health insurance companies are taking advantage of people,” Mr. Obama said. “We know that we have to have some form of cost containment because if we don’t, then our budgets are going to blow up, and we know that small businesses are going to need help so that they can provide health insurance to their families. Those are the core, some of the core elements to this bill.”
Republican Congressional aides said a compromise bill could include new insurance industry regulations, including a ban on denying coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions, as well as aid for small businesses for health costs and possible steps to restrict malpractice lawsuits. But as Mr. Obama noted on ABC, a pared-down package imposing restrictions on insurers might make coverage unaffordable, which is one reason he prefers a broad overhaul.
As the full Congress returned to Washington to start a new legislative year on the first anniversary of Mr. Obama’s inauguration options were limited and there were signs of a divide between the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill. House leaders signaled that they had effectively ruled out the idea of adopting the Senate bill, which would send it directly to the president for his signature. Yet close advisers to the president said such a move was still on the table.
Mr. Brown’s victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday denies Democrats the 60th vote that they need to surmount filibusters and advance a revised health measure. Senate leaders said they would not risk antagonizing voters by trying to rush a bill through before Mr. Brown could be sworn in, and Mr. Obama agreed.
“People in Massachusetts spoke,” the president told ABC. “He’s got to be part of that process.”
Another option considered by Democrats would be to use the procedural maneuver known as reconciliation to pass chunks of the health care bill attached to a budget measure, which requires only a simple majority. But there appeared to be little appetite for such a move on Capitol Hill.
Democrats also wrestled with the implications of losing their 60-vote majority for their wider legislative agenda, including efforts to tighten regulation of the financial system and combat global warming, even as they sensed new urgency to turn their attention to creating jobs and improving the economy.
Democratic efforts to pass a bill on energy and global warming were in trouble even before the special election; administration officials and Senate Democratic leaders have been quietly negotiating a scaled-back package focusing more on job-creating technologies than on limits for climate-altering pollution.
Even the president’s new proposal to tax big banks for the government’s bailout losses, which Republicans privately conceded was a political winner given widespread anti-Wall Street sentiment, suddenly did not look like such a sure thing. Industry lobbyists noted that Mr. Brown publicly opposed the bank tax and that Mr. Obama had spotlighted that opposition during a campaign appearance in Massachusetts on Sunday — to no avail.
But the outcome might put further impetus behind efforts to bring down the budget deficit, a topic the White House has addressed more visibly in recent days. On Tuesday, the administration and Congressional Democrats agreed to create a commission to attack the deficit and the national debt.
At a news conference at the Capitol, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, sought to minimize health care as compared with jobs and the economy. But he made clear that Democrats did not see a clear path forward.
“The election in Massachusetts changes the math in the Senate,” Mr. Reid said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that people are hurting.” Pressed about the health care legislation, Mr. Reid said, “The problems out there — it’s certainly more than health care.” Pressed again, he said: “No decision has been made.”
Senior Republicans showed little new willingness to collaborate with the Democrats. Asked where he might be willing to work across the aisle, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, offered praise for Mr. Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan but not a single example on domestic policy.
Mr. McConnell was asked if the health care bill was dead. “I sure hope so,” he said.
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said she was eager to work with Democrats in devising an alternative to the health care bill passed four weeks ago by the Senate on a party-line vote.
“What I hope the White House will do is start from scratch and, instead of pushing this bill through the House, work with a bipartisan group of senators to achieve a consensus bill that would have widespread support,” Ms. Collins said. “There are many provisions of the bill that have bipartisan support. And I believe the president would be wise to draft a new bill that he could get through both the House and the Senate with supermajority votes.”