Obama clashes with Republicans at health summit

WITH tempers flaring, President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans clashed in an extraordinary live-on-TV summit yesterday over the right prescription for the nation’s broken healthcare system, talking of agreement but holding to long-entrenched positions that leave them far apart.

“We have a very difficult gap to bridge here,” said Republican Eric Cantor, the No 2 House Republican. “We just can’t afford this. That’s the ultimate problem.”

With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats’ Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props “that prevent us from having a conversation”.

So it went, hour after hour at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House – a marathon policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public.

The more than six-hour back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation’s healthcare crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide, in which Democrats seek the kind of broad remake that has eluded leaders for half a century and Republicans favour much more modest changes. With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they were left with the critical decision about where to go next.

Obama and his Democratic allies argued that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation’s future economic vitality.

The president cast healthcare as “one of the biggest drags on our economy”, tying his top domestic priority to an issue that’s even more pressing to many Americans.

Obama lamented partisan bickering that has resulted in a stalemate over legislation to extend coverage to more than 30 million people who are now uninsured.

“Politics I think ended up trumping practical common sense.”

And yet, even as he pleaded for cooperation – “actually a discussion, and not just us trading talking points” – he insisted on a number of Democratic points and acknowledged agreement may not be possible. “I don’t know that those gaps can be bridged.”

With hardened positions well staked out before the meeting, the president and his Democratic allies prepared to move on alone – a gamble with political risks no matter how they do that.

One option – preferred by the White House and progressives in the Democratic caucus – is to try to pass a comprehensive plan without GOP support, by using controversial Senate budget reconciliation rules that would disallow filibusters. GOP Senator Lamar Alexander asked Democrats to swear off a jam-it-through approach, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid defended it. Obama weighed in with gentle chiding, asking both sides to focus on substance and worry about process later – a plea he made repeatedly throughout the day with little success.

A USA Today/Gallup survey released Thursday found Americans tilt 49-42 against Democrats forging ahead by themselves without any GOP support. Opposition was even stronger to the idea of Senate Democrats using the special budget rules, with 52% opposed and 39% in favour.

A second alternative for Obama and his party is going smaller, with a modest bill that would merely smooth some of the rough edges from the current system. A month after the Massachusetts election that cost Democrats their Senate supermajority and threw the health legislation in doubt, the White House has developed its own slimmed-down health care proposal so the president will know what the impact would be if he chooses that route, according to a Democratic official familiar with the discussions.

That official could not provide details, but Democrats have looked at approaches including expanding Medicaid and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health plans until around age 26.