President Obama Giving Opening Remarks at Today's Health Care Summit
Halftime (three hours in) has been reached at the much-hyped health care summit, and the first half mainly focused on the GOP and Obama going back and forth, mainly talking past each other than to each other as both sides recited their prepared scripts and talking points, with GOP Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tn.) declaring that “We believe we have a better idea” on health care reform. At this point, neither side appears to have gained an upper hand from the proceedings, although the issue of comprehensive health reform (Democrats) versus incremental health reform (Republicans) has been made explicitly clear. Obama summed up the proceedings to the press on the way to lunch by stating that “legitimate philosophical differences” were exposed in the first half of the summit as reported by ABC’s Jake Tapper:
The president said that he believes there are areas where they are finding agreement, but did not out right answer a reporter’s question if he believes the first half of the summit had made progress yet.
“”I think we’re establishing that there are actually some areas of real agreement. And we’re starting to focus on what the real disagreements are,” Obama said, “ If you look at you know the issue of how much government should be involved, you know the argument that republicans are making really isn’t that this is a government takeover of health care but rather than, we’re insuring or we’re regulating the insurance market too much.”
The president called this a “legitimate philosophical disagreement” that he hopes to explore more in the afternoon sessions.
As noted earlier, a minor dust up over equal time between Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-Ky) and President Obama culminated in an Obama quip that his time doesn’t count towards the equal division between the parties “because I’m the President.” Vice President Joe Biden interrupted Obama mid-sentence at one point to contradict the President and House Member Eric Cantor (R-Va) and argued that no serious philosophical difference existed between the parties over federal insurance regulation. GOP Senator John McCain (R-Az) got in a few rhetorical shots at the odious process around Obamacare to date, pointing out a few of the backroom deals between special interest groups and the President as well as deals with individual Democratic Senators. Obama reacted testily and scolded McCain, at one point advising the Senator that “the campaign is over” in reference to Obama’s victory over 2008 GOP Presidential nominee. An early dispute between Obama and Alexander over whether Obamacare would cause premiums to rise appeared to be a draw, with both sides making arguably accurate arguments based on the same data.
Obama also introduced two new talking points during the first half: analogies of health insurance to car insurance and health insurance regulation to the government’s regulation of food safety.
Finally, before the meeting began, Obama gave a cryptic response to a reporter’s shouted question, do you have a “Plan B”, which may have been in reference to the WSJ story last night which claimed the White House is preparing a scaled down, approximately 250 Billion Dollar plan (as opposed to the 950 Billion of the present Obama Health Plan). The AP reports the exchange:
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.
The slimmer backup plan was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Obama himself hinted at a Democrats-only strategy. When asked by reporters as he walked to Blair House if he had a Plan B, he responded: “I’ve always got plans.”
The Politico is also reporting that Obama intends to abandon all bipartisan negotiations on Monday of next week, so it may be that the WSJ was false and Obama intends to attempt to push his comprehensive plan through the Senate via reconciliation after the summit.
UPDATE: Ed at Hotair finds an interesting tidbit from Harry Reid this morning, saying on camera in his initial speech that “no one has talked about reconciliation.” Even the left wing new media site TPM called Reid’s statement “obviously not true.”
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