In a speech in Durham Saturday, Congressional candidate Renee Ellmers said she is ready to take office.
Ellmers, a Republican, leads incumbent Democrat Bob Etheridge by about 1,400 votes in the race for North Carolina’s Second Congressional District.
Etheridge has called for a recount in his bid to keep the seat, but Ellmers said she wants to get to work.
"I'm going forward as if we're not in this recount situation, because I have so much to learn,” Ellmers said Saturday.
Beginning Monday, she’ll be in Washington, D.C., attending orientation for new members of Congress and assembling a staff. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, her lawyers will monitor the recount.
According to the State Board of Elections, Ellmers received 93,893 votes in the Second District race to Etheridge's 92,404. The 1,489-vote gap is within the 1 percent threshold outlined under state law for Etheridge to seek a recount.
"As more votes were counted over the last week, it became increasingly clear that this race is too close to call and a recount is warranted,” Etheridge said in a statement Friday.
Ellmers is confident that her lead is insurmountable.
The State Board of Elections has until Nov. 23 to announce certified, final results.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday outlined four Republican ideas that he is open to including in the final health care reform bill, including efforts to combat waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid and rein in medical malpractice lawsuits.
Obama included the ideas in a letter to congressional leaders and said they were the result of last week’s health care summit at the White House, where Obama offered to look at Republican ideas to give the bill a more bipartisan cast.
The four ideas amounted to relatively modest changes in a nearly $1 trillion bill but were a bid by Obama to show that he was serious about incorporating Republican ideas into the bill. “I said throughout this process that I’d continue to draw on the best ideas from both parties, and I’m open to these proposals in that spirit,” Obama said.
But Republicans were swift in rejecting Obama’s ideas as little more than cosmetic changes that do nothing to significantly change the scope and range of a fundamentally flawed health reform bill.
Even Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), whose ideas for undercover Medicare Inspectors was embraced by Obama said, "That is just one thing."
Republican Sen. John McCain said Obama didn't go far enough when the president agreed with McCain that a Senate provision to exempt 800,000 Floridians from Medicare Advantage cuts faced by other beneficiaries should not be included in the final bill.
"He ought to get rid of all of them," McCain said of the special legislative deals:
But Obama appears to be betting that by including Republican proposals that are rejected out of hand, he can help build a case for a party-line reconciliation strategy.
Obama stopped short of saying that he will include the proposals, but the letter, combined with his positive comments during last week's health reform summit, send a strong signal that they will make it in.
In addition to Coburn’s idea, Obama embraced the idea of $50 million in grants to states that are testing medical malpractice reforms; increasing physicians' Medicare reimbursements and offering health savings accounts in the insurance exchange. The health savings accounts, which allow taxpayers to control how their own dollars are used for medical coverage, are a staple of Republican health reform ideas dating back to President George W. Bush.
The full letter is below:
March 2, 2010
Dear Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Representative Boehner:
Thank you again for the time, energy, and preparation you invested in last Thursday’s bipartisan meeting on health insurance reform. I have always believed that our legislative process works best when both sides can discuss our differences and common goals openly and honestly, and I’m very pleased that our meeting at Blair House offered the American people and their elected representatives a rare opportunity to explore different health reform proposals in extraordinary depth.
The meeting was a good opportunity to move past the usual rhetoric and sound-bites that have come to characterize this debate and identify areas on which we agree and disagree. And one point on which everyone expressed agreement was that the cost of health care is a large and growing problem that, left untended, threatens families, businesses and the solvency of our government itself.
I also left convinced that the Republican and Democratic approaches to health care have more in common than most people think.
For example, we agree on the need to reform our insurance markets. We agree on the idea of allowing small businesses and individuals who lack insurance to join together to increase their purchasing power so they can enjoy greater choices and lower prices. And we agree on the dire need to wring out waste, fraud and abuse and get control of skyrocketing health care costs.
But there were also important areas of disagreement. There was a fundamental disagreement about what role the oversight of the health insurance industry should play in reform. I believe we must insist on some common-sense rules of the road to hold insurance companies accountable for the decisions they make to raise premiums and deny coverage. I don’t believe we can afford to leave life-and-death decisions about health care for America’s families to the discretion of insurance company executives alone.
No matter how we move forward, there are at least four policy priorities identified by Republican Members at the meeting that I am exploring. I said throughout this process that I’d continue to draw on the best ideas from both parties, and I’m open to these proposals in that spirit:
1. Although the proposal I released last week included a comprehensive set of initiatives to combat fraud, waste, and abuse, Senator Coburn had an interesting suggestion that we engage medical professionals to conduct random undercover investigations of health care providers that receive reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and other Federal programs.
2. My proposal also included a provision from the Senate health reform bill that authorizes funding to states for demonstrations of alternatives to resolving medical malpractice disputes, including health courts. Last Thursday, we discussed the provision in the bills cosponsored by Senators Coburn and Burr and Representatives Ryan and Nunes (S. 1099) that provides a similar program of grants to states for demonstration projects. Senator Enzi offered a similar proposal in a health insurance reform bill he sponsored in the last Congress.
As we discussed, my Administration is already moving forward in funding demonstration projects through the Department of Health and Human Services, and Secretary Sebelius will be awarding $23 million for these grants in the near future. However, in order to advance our shared interest in incentivizing states to explore what works in this arena, I am open to including an appropriation of $50 million in my proposal for additional grants. Currently there is only an authorization, which does not guarantee that the grants will be funded.
3. At the meeting, Senator Grassley raised a concern, shared by many Democrats, that Medicaid reimbursements to doctors are inadequate in many states, and that if Medicaid is expanded to cover more people, we should consider increasing doctor reimbursement. I’m open to exploring ways to address this issue in a fiscally responsible manner.
4. Senator Barrasso raised a suggestion that we expand Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). I know many Republicans believe that HSAs, when used in conjunction with high-deductible health plans, are a good vehicle to encourage more cost-consciousness in consumers’ use of health care services. I believe that high-deductible health plans could be offered in the exchange under my proposal, and I’m open to including language to ensure that is clear. This could help to encourage more people to take advantage of HSAs.
There are provisions that were added to the legislation that shouldn’t have been. That’s why my proposal does not include the Medicare Advantage provision, mentioned by Senator McCain at the meeting, which provided transitional extra benefits for Florida and other states. My proposal eliminates those payments, gradually reducing Medicare Advantage payments across the country relative to fee-for service Medicare in an equitable fashion (page 8). My proposal rewards high-quality and high-performing plans.
In addition, my proposal eliminates the Nebraska FMAP provision, replacing it with additional federal financing to all states for the expansion of Medicaid.
Admittedly, there are areas on which Republicans and Democrats don’t agree. While we all believe that reform must be built around our existing private health insurance system, I believe that we must hold the insurance industry to clear rules, so they can’t arbitrarily raise rates or reduce or eliminate coverage. That must be a part of any serious reform to make it work for the many Americans who have insurance coverage today, as well as those who don’t.
I also believe that piecemeal reform is not the best way to effectively reduce premiums, end the exclusion of people with pre-existing conditions or offer Americans the security of knowing that they will never lose coverage, even if they lose or change jobs.
My ideas have been informed by discussions with Republicans and Democrats, doctors and nurses, health care experts, and everyday Americans – not just last Thursday, but over the course of a yearlong dialogue. Both parties agree that the health care status quo is unsustainable. And both should agree that it’s just not an option to walk away from the millions of American families and business owners counting on reform.
After decades of trying, we’re closer than we’ve ever been to making health insurance reform a reality. I look forward to working with you to complete what would be a truly historic achievement.
Democrats and independents haven't picked a candidate yet in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, according to a new poll from the Civitas Institute.
Civitas asked Democrats and independents who are likely to vote in the general election who they would choose between Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, Lexington lawyer Cal Cunningham and Chapel Hill lawyer Ken Lewis.
Of the 367 voters surveyed, 14 percent picked Marshall, 5 percent chose Lewis and 4 percent chose Cunningham. The remaining 77 percent were unsure.
Marshall did better among voters who identified themselves as liberal. Those voters tend to vote in Democratic primaries, according to Civitas' Executive Director Francis De Luca
The Civitas poll echoes a similar result from a poll by Public Policy Polling, which also found that Marshall has a lead while most Democrats have not yet picked a candidate in the primary.
The poll, which was conducted Feb. 15-18 by Tel Opinion Research of Alexandria, Va., had a margin of error of 5 percentage points.
After a day of debate and disagreement, President Barack Obama concluded Thursday's unprecedented live talkfest on health care with the bleak assessment that accord between Democrats and Republicans may not be possible. He rejected Republican preferences for starting over, discussing the issue much longer or taking a step-by-step solution.
Obama said he is not sure that Democrats can "bridge the gap" with the GOP to reach a compromise on the plan, and he strongly suggested that Democrats will try to pass a sweeping overhaul without GOP support by using controversial Senate budget rules that would disallow filibusters.
Then, he said, this fall's elections would write the verdict on who was right.
"We cannot have another yearlong debate about this," Obama said at the end of a 7½-hour marathon policy debate.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters after the summit that he was "discouraged" by the daylong meeting. Obama and his fellow Democrats made it clear that they want to continue to pursue their own sweeping measure, he said. "What we think he ought to do is start over."
Neither side gave ground throughout, sticking mostly to familiar arguments and talking points. The president urged Republicans to "do a little soul searching" and said majority Democrats would decide quickly how to proceed on the issue that has eluded leaders for half a century.
The lengthy back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation's health care 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 favor 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 at Thursday's meeting that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation's future economic vitality. The president cast health care 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.
"This is the last chance, as far as I'm concerned," Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y.
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," he said.
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," Obama said.
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 Sen. Lamar Alexander asked Democrats to swear off a jam-it-through approach, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., 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.
Popular Opposition
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 percent opposed and 39 percent in favor.
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.
Many lawmakers and Obama stressed areas of agreement, including items such as allowing parents to keep young adult children on their health plans into their 20s, cutting fraud and waste and ensuring that sick people aren't dropped by insurance companies. But such items occupy the edges of reform.
Indeed, any skepticism about reaching broad consensus was vindicated as soon as the first Republican spoke — in opposition to the mammoth bills that have passed the House and Senate. Alexander, of Tennessee, said Congress and the administration should start over and take small steps, including medical malpractice reform, high-risk insurance pools, a way to allow Americans to shop out of state for lower-cost plans and an expansion of health savings accounts.
"We believe we have a better idea," Alexander said. "Our views represent the views of a great number of American people."
Disagreements were not always expressed diplomatically.
Alexander challenged Obama's claim that insurance premiums would fall under the Democratic legislation. "You're wrong," he said. Responded Obama: "I'm pretty certain I'm not wrong."
As with much in the complicated health care debate, both sides had a point. The Congressional Budget Office says average premiums for people buying insurance individually would be 10 to 13 percent higher in 2016 under the Senate legislation, as Alexander said. But the policies would cover more medical services, and around half of people could get government subsidies to defray the extra costs.
Echoes of 2008
Obama and his 2008 GOP opponent for the presidency, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, had a barbed exchange. McCain complained at length about what he said was a backdoor process to produce the original bills that resulted in favors for special interests and carve-outs for certain states.
"We're not campaigning anymore. The election's over," responded a clearly irritated Obama.
"I'm reminded of that every day," McCain shot back, adding that "the American people care about what we did and how we did it."
Said Obama: "We can have a debate about process or we can have a debate about how we're actually going to help the American people at this point. And I think that's — the latter debate is the one that they care about a little bit more."
Generally, polls show Americans want solutions to the problems of high medical costs, eroding access to coverage and uneven quality. But they are split over the Democrats' sweeping legislation, with its $1 trillion, 10-year price tag and many complex provisions, including some that wouldn't take effect for eight years.
The Democratic bills would require most Americans to get health insurance, while providing subsidies for many in the form of a new tax credit. The Democrats would set up a competitive insurance market for small businesses and people buying coverage on their own. Democrats also would make a host of other changes, which include addressing a coverage gap in the Medicare prescription benefit and setting up a new long-term-care insurance program. Their plan would be paid for through a mix of Medicare cuts and tax increases.
"Not only are lawmakers polarized, the parties' constituencies are far apart," said Robert Blendon, a Harvard University professor who follows public opinion trends on health care. "The president is going to use it as a launching pad for what will be the last effort to get a big bill passed. He will say that he tried to get a bipartisan compromise and it wasn't possible."
The Blair House setting wasn't grand, or even particularly comfortable. About 40 senators, representatives and administration officials were crowded shoulder-to-shoulder around a hollow square table, perched for the six-hour marathon on wooden chairs with thin cushions. Coffee breaks were ruled out, so the only pause in the action came during lunch.
C-SPAN carried complete coverage, while news operations from cable networks to public broadcasting were making it the focus of their day.
Leaving the site during a lunch break, Obama was asked by waiting reporters if he thought the debate was engendering a lot of interest across the country.
"I don't know if it's interesting watching it on TV," he responded.
Today I watched Pres. Obama's "Bi-Partisan" Health Care Summit meeting.
After reviewing this televised talkfest, it appears the GOP won.
Barack Obama is a Gifted Orator, however its obvious he can't speak as well without his Teleprompter (prepared remarks).
For once he was actually at a loss for words can you believe it?
When it was time for Dr. Tom Coburn (R) to speak he presented three great Health Care Reform ideas:
1) STOP FOOD STAMP ABUSE by encouraging people who use Food Stamps to purchase Healthy Foods via program Incentives.
Its no secret thousands of citizens who use Food stamps often sell them or waste them buying Candy, Chips, Cake, Ice Cream and Gum for their children versus Fruits/ Vegetables.
Such poor diets cause Childhood Obesity and Diabetes.
Why not hire more DSS Workers and require Food Stamp Users to turn in their receipts each month as to keep tabs on what's actually being purchased?
This will also deter the selling of Food Stamps.
I'm NOT suggesting eliminating Food Stamps in this Recession.
However I do agree with Dr. Coburn that the Food Stamp program needs to be highly monitored nationwide to prevent and STOP FOOD STAMP ABUSE.
2) Address Medicaid/ Medicare Fraud by sending Under Cover Patients to Physicians Offices' as a means of catching Doctors and Hospital Administrators who overbill the Federal Gov't.
This is especially so in states like New York and North Carolina.
3) Dr. Coburn also mentioned rewarding Physicians who provide Quality Patient Care versus Doctors who just keep ordering a bunch of unnecessary tests to make money.
Republican members appeared Studious, Well-Informed and Well-Prepared for this debate versus Democrats who were just repeating empty Political, Harvard rhetoric.
I'm very disappointed.
Its obvious Democrats just want to ram this particular Health Care Bill through regardless of whom it will hurt most financially...American Voters.
Check out the Health Care Summit video below Stay tuned.
MCCONNELL: Mr. President, since some liberties have been taken here, let me just make a quick observation. Then I'm going to call on Dr. Coburn to make our framing statement on the issue of cost containment.
One thing I think we need to be acutely aware of, ladies and gentlemen, we are here representing the American people. And Harry mentioned several polls. I think it is not irrelevant that the American people, if you average out of all of the polls, are opposed to this bill by 55-37. And we know from a USA Today-Gallup poll out this morning they're opposed to using the reconciliation device, the short-circuit approach that Lamar referred to that would end up with only bipartisan opposition, by 52-39.
Now, I'd like to call on Dr. Tom Coburn who's been a practicing physician for many years, to address the cost-containment issue.
COBURN: Thank you.
Well, Mr. President, thanks for having us do this. I think today's going to be enlightening.
The first thing I would do is put out a caution to us because what I see the Congress doing and what I saw this last year is us actually performing bad medicine. And that is that we get stuck in the idea of treating the symptom rather than treating the disease.
And whether you go to Harvard or whether you go to Thomson Reuters, here's -- there are some facts we know about health care in America. And the facts we know is one out of every three dollars that gets spent doesn't help anybody get well and doesn't prevent anybody from getting sick.
The second thing we know is, from the Congressional Research Service, that most of the mal-drivers (ph) today in health care come from government rules and regulations. The government now directs over 60 percent of the health care in this country. And if throwing money at it and creating new government programs could solve it, we wouldn't be sitting here today because we've done all that. It hadn't worked. So what I thought we ought to do is maybe talk about why does it cost so much, because the thing that keeps people from getting access to care in our country is cost.
You mentioned Malia and Sasha. The fact is, is with young kids going to the E.R., whether they have meningitis or asthma, they're going to get treated in this country. But they may get labeled with a preexisting illness after that. And that's another thing I'd be happy to talk about at a later time.
But the fact is, is we know how to treat acute asthma. What we don't do a good job of is preventing children from getting acute asthma. We don't do the good job of prevention.
So when you break down the costs, what we know is 33 percent of the costs in health care shouldn't be there.
And how do we go about doing that? And what are the components of that cost? And when you look at, when it's studied, if you look at what Malcolm Sparrow from Harvard says, he says 20 percent of the cost of federal government health care is fraud. That's his number.
If you look at Thomson Reuters, when they look at all of this, they say at least 15 percent of government-run health care is fraud.
Well, when you look at the total amount of health care that's government run, you know, you're talking $150 billion a year.
So tomorrow, if we got together and fixed fraud, we could cut health care 7.5 percent tomorrow for people in this country.
So what we ought to do is do the Willie Sutton thing. We ought to go for where the money is.
What's the other area? What we do know -- and I'm guilty of this, Dr. Barrasso's guilty of it, Dr. Boustany is guilty of it -- is a large portion of the tests we order every day aren't for patients. They're for doctors. And the reason they're there is because we are risk averse to the tort system and extortion system that's out there today in health care.
And there are a lot of ways to fix that. But I just went through last night, if you add up what Thomson Reuters, which looked at all the studies that have been done and combined them in, they say between $625 billion and $850 billion a year of health care dollars are wasted.
So it seems to me if cost is the number one thing that's keeping people from getting care, then the efforts of us, as we go after cost, ought to be to go to those areas where the cost is wasted.
And there's a philosophical difference in how we do that. One wants more government-centered approach to that. I would personally prefer a more patient-centered, market-orient approach to that. But nevertheless, there's where we can come together, just on those two areas, where we could cut costs 15 percent tomorrow. And that's for everybody in the country.
What would -- what would happen to access in this country if tomorrow everybody's health care costs went down 15 percent? Access would markedly increase.
So what I would hope we would do is that we would go back and concentrate on the areas that have the biggest pot of gold for us. And the biggest pot of gold is, is we don't incentivize prevention. We don't pay rewards for great management of chronic disease. We have a system throughout the country where we're encouraging lawsuits that aren't productive for the country, and what they actually do is cause the cost of health care to go through the roof.
We also know there's some other real things that we ought to address. There are conflict of interests within the medical field. There's nothing wrong with addressing those and taking those off (ph).
We know that we do not -- we absolutely do not incentivize prevention. And I'm not talking about creating walking paths. I'm talking about paying people who actually do a good job to do prevention.
Talking about changing the school lunch programs where it meets the needs, nutritional needs of Americans. Changing the food stamp program where it incentivize people to eat the right things, not the wrong things. We actually create more diabetes through the food stamp program and the school lunch program than probably any other thing, because we're not feeding a -- offering and incentivizing a great response.
COBURN: So I think if -- I think it's great that we're coming together. But the gold is in where's the cost excesses? And what I would hope we would do is we would look at that and say, How do we come together and actually achieve a reduction in the extortion that goes on in this country in terms of medical malpractice? And there's lots of ways to do that without us mandating states to do that.
How do we do that in terms of creating an elimination of fraud?
You know, when you compare the private sector fraud rates, it's 1 percent compared to Medicare and Medicaid. You know, there's estimates that there's $15 billion worth of fraud in Medicaid a year in New York City alone.
So we haven't attacked that. We haven't gone where the money is. And my hope would be that we would look at where the money is. And if truly it's accurate -- and I don't know many people that will disagree that $1 in $3 doesn't help somebody get well and doesn't prevent it, then we ought to be going for that $1 in $3.
And we ought to do it by not creating a whole bunch of new government programs, but by creating an incentive to reward people. In your new bill you have good fraud programs, but you lack the biggest thing to do. The biggest thing on fraud is to have undercover patients so that people know we're checking on whether or not this is a legitimate bill. And you don't know who's an undercover patient and who's not. And all of a sudden you start changing your attitude of whether or not you're going to milk Medicare or you're going to milk Medicaid.
REID (?): Mr. President, if I could just say, I'm not an expert on much, but I am filibusters. And we've got 40 members of Congress here.
OBAMA: Tom, you made some powerful points. You want to just wrap up real quick?
COBURN: No, I'll just finish with that is $1 out of $3 not helping everybody, we ought to go for where it is.
OBAMA: Well, Tom, I appreciate what you said. I think we're going to have Steny Hoyer go next. I just want to make this quick point: Every good idea that we've heard about reducing fraud and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid system, we've adopted in our legislation.
So that's an example of where we agree. We want to eliminate fraud and abuse within the government systems.
Let's recognize, though, that those savings in the government systems, which will help taxpayers and allow us to do more, doesn't account for the rising costs in the private marketplace.
Now, the private marketplace, you mentioned the issue of medical malpractice and, you know, frivolous lawsuits. And I -- as you indicated, these are areas where Secretary Sebelius has already begun to try to give states some incentives to do that.
On the prevention side, there's a whole host of provisions inside the legislation that's been passed by the House and Senate, and I think Steny will talk about it.
So we've identified some areas we agree on. And then the question just is does that help the average family in the individual market who potentially can get costs.
But, Steny, why don't you...
COBURN: Let me just respond to one thing. You get cost shifted every penny that gets wasted on Medicare.
OBAMA: Absolutely.
COBURN: And that gets cost shifted to the private sector. So if, in fact, we're wasting...
OBAMA: It would help.
COBURN: ... in the public sector, we're shifting it to the private sector.
President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies are pleading their case for health care overhaul in an extraordinary summit with Republicans, broadcast live to a divided public on daytime TV.
But Democrats are already looking beyond Thursday's meeting at historic Blair House. With GOP lawmakers remaining steadfast in their opposition, the president and his party are preparing to move on alone.
At stake in the high-risk strategy is the Democrats' stalemated legislation to extend coverage to more than 30 million people who are now uninsured. Politically, it's an all-or-nothing gamble in a midterm election year for Democrats bent on achieving a goal that has eluded lawmakers for a half-century.
Polls show Americans want their elected leaders to address the problems of high medical costs, eroding access to coverage and uneven quality. But the public is split over the Democrats' sweeping legislation, with its $1 trillion, 10-year price tag and many complex provisions, including some that wouldn't take effect for another eight years — after Obama has packed up and left the White House.
For Obama, the summit is his chance to make a compelling closing argument to the American people. If he succeeds, Democrats will push ahead to pass the legislation with a package of revisions he's proposed. If Obama falters, another Democratic president will have been humbled by health care. He will have to appeal to both sides to at least give him a modest bill smoothing some of the rough edges from the current system.
Obama's chief spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said hours in advance of the session that he thinks the talks can be productive if participants "put aside this notion of kabuki theater, put aside this notion of six-hour photo ops."
He said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that he understands "why the American people don't think Washington can get anything done."
Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican, said he was hopeful there would be "a productive session."
"We're going in because Republicans do care about improving health care for the American people and their families," the Virginia Republican said on CBS's "The Early Show."
On Wednesday, the statements of two leaders on Capitol Hill illustrated the chasm between the parties, however.
"We'll have that meeting," said Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who helped write the Senate bill. "But far more important, after that meeting, you can either join us or get out of the way."
"I think it's nearly impossible to imagine a scenario under which we could reach an agreement," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. "Because we don't think we ought to pass a 2,700-page bill that seeks to restructure one-sixth of our economy."
Both men are at the summit, which begins at 10 a.m. EST, and will be carried live from Blair House, the presidential guest quarters. C-SPAN will carry complete coverage. News operations from CNN to public broadcasting are planning to make it the focus of their day.
"Not only are lawmakers polarized, the parties' constituencies are far apart," said Robert Blendon, a Harvard University professor who follows public opinion trends on health care. "The president is going to use it as a launching pad for what will be the last effort to get a big bill passed. He will say that he tried to get a bipartisan compromise and it wasn't possible."
'Coming with open minds'
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who will have a place next to Obama at the talks, said, "I'm hoping that Leader McConnell and his colleagues in the House and Senate are coming with open minds."
She said in a CNN interview shortly before the start of the meeting that the legislation the administration seeks already embraces several GOP proposals, including "going after fraud, creating new marketplaces, assisting small business owners and families to get coverage ... focusing on wellness and prevention."
In an eleventh-hour move, the White House invited Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of the few Republican moderates the White House courted throughout last year in hopes of winning her support for the legislation. She declined since she wasn't chosen under the long-standing rules for the event.
Democrats say no decision on legislative strategy will be made until after the summit.
Three dozen lawmakers, plus several administration officials, were to sit at a hollow square table with name placards. Leaders of both parties planned to speak. Topics were to include controlling health care costs and expanding coverage, deficit reduction and insurance reform.
Republicans will focus on six areas: funding high-risk insurance pools for people denied coverage because of medical problems; expanding health savings accounts; allowing consumers to shop out of state for lower-cost plans; capping malpractice judgments to reduce the practice of defensive medicine; helping small businesses afford coverage; and supporting state innovation in trying to control costs.
Like the Democrats' plan, those ideas have their pros and cons. Some undoubtedly would help people now struggling with costs and coverage. But the GOP proposals, even if taken together, probably would not put the nation on a path toward coverage for all. Since health insurance is expensive, that would take a major commitment of federal dollars that Republicans are loath to make.
The Democratic bills would require most Americans to get health insurance, while providing subsidies for many in the form of a new tax credit. They would set up a competitive insurance market for small businesses and people buying coverage on their own. Democrats also would make a host of other changes, which include addressing the coverage gap in the Medicare prescription benefit and setting up a new long-term care insurance program. Their plan would be paid for through a mix of Medicare cuts and tax increases.
Barring an unlikely bipartisan breakthrough, all but a handful of Democrats' votes would be needed to pass the legislation under Senate budget reconciliation rules, which would disallow GOP filibusters.
If President Barack Obama really wanted to show he’s serious about winning over Republicans on health care reform, he could offer up some key concessions at Thursday’s summit, like caps on malpractice awards or allowing insurers to sell across state lines.
And if Republicans wanted to reciprocate, they could at least acknowledge the congressional scorekeepers are right – the Democratic plans cut the deficit in the long term and rein in health care costs.
But that would assume either side is willing to do this.
Heading into Thursday’s summit, there’s been a lot of talk on both sides about how they’re the reasonable ones, willing to meet in the middle – and it’s the other side that’s to blame.
But the reality is, both sides have been responding to the overwhelming incentives to play to the home team, and to tailor their positions to seek partisan advantage and political gain.
So in the end, the health care summit seems most likely to clarify what has been an obvious reality lurking just below the surface at almost every turn in this episode, which is that neither side is really on the level when they say they were committed to bipartisanship.
Nor do they really want to split the difference – to do something in six hours at Blair House that they wouldn’t do all year.
The parties have become so entrenched in their positions that Republicans say they will never accept the Democratic comprehensive reform bill, and Democrats say they will never start over and adopt the GOP’s scaled-back, market-driven approach.
But the opportunities will be there, to be sure. Republicans will push a six-step plan for enacting health care reform, which includes many ideas that have already been embraced to a lesser degree in the Democratic bills.
And a central element of the Democratic strategy – hashed out on a conference call with President Barack Obama himself Wednesday — will involve pointing that out at every turn, to essentially shame the GOP to get on board.
Yet neither side showed any sign of cooling off ahead of the summit.
"If they are coming in and saying start over, there is nothing to talk about,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) shot back: "Why not start over? The overwhelming majority of the American people want us to start over."
The tit-for-tat continued until hours before the summit convened. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) pushed to expand the invite list to include governors, but the White House denied the request.
So Boehner offered a spot to Rep. Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan who crafted an anti-abortion provision in the House bill that infuriated liberals. But Stupak later said the minority leader never consulted him.
The White House, on the other hand, extended a last-minute invite to Sen. Olympia Snowe, the moderate Maine Republican who negotiated for months with Democrats but was left off Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s list. She declined.
While Republicans huddled among themselves, Obama dialed into a meeting of top Democrats in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to map out a strategy. Democrats view the summit as a confidence-building exercise – it will be a success if Obama shows up the Republicans and, in turn, gives Democrats the political will to take the next step of reconciliation, a senior congressional aide said.
It took a year to get to this point.
Democrats believe congressional Republican leaders were determined, almost from Day One, to kill health care reform at any cost – and McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledged as much during a POLITICO interview in November.
He said he embarked on a “very systematic and persistent” campaign since Memorial Day -- well before the House or Senate bills were even released -- to undermine support for the president’s reform push.
“For the public to understand there was a genuine debate about policy here, it was important for it not to become ‘bipartisan,’” McConnell said. “On the merits, this was a proposal that didn’t deserve, in my view, bipartisan support.”
“It deserved bipartisan defeat,” McConnell said.
In response, Republicans argue that Obama should have reworked his approach, knowing their objections. Instead, Obama embraced a strategy of limited engagement. He targeted Snowe and met with her repeatedly, once for more than 90 minutes in the Oval Office, hoping to put bipartisan sheen on the bill and provide some wiggle room in the Senate.
“Their attitude towards bipartisanship has been kind of like a shooting gallery, we can pick off two or three Republicans to pass the bill,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said. “That is not the way it is done. The way we do bipartisanship is we sit down at the beginning and agree with each other on how to move forward.”
In fact, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) tried the bipartisan route. He spent almost nine months trying to bring a handful of Republicans onto the bill, and had the support of Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in doing it – to an extent. The theory was that if Baucus could convince Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to come on board, other Republicans in both chambers would follow.
Until July, the approach looked promising. But a cascade of decisions threw it off course.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told conservative activists that they needed to make health care Obama’s Waterloo, infuriating Democrats who saw the remarks as the first public sign that Republicans had no plans to support the bill.
It was around this time that Baucus faced increased pressure from Reid and the White House to wrap up the Gang of Six negotiations, angering Republicans who didn’t want to be rushed.
Yet the Republicans involved in talks – Snowe, Grassley and Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming – were also being squeezed. When it appeared that the group was nearing a compromise, McConnell reined them in, extracting guarantees from Grassley and Enzi that they would not sign off on a deal without consent from the caucus, according to congressional aides.
Along the way, Republicans grew more frustrated with Democrats. Obama would say at public events that he would sit down with any lawmaker, only to ignore repeated requests from conservatives. He told the American Medical Association that he was open to reducing medical malpractice costs, on ly to never make a serious push for the reforms that Republicans cared about. Democrats portrayed the Senate Health committee bill as bipartisan because 160 Republican amendments were accepted, only to have their staff later write some of them out of the measure, Republicans have said.
Grassley went to the White House in early August and asked Obama to drop the public insurance option in a bid for bipartisan support. Obama refused, Grassley has said. Democrats, who no longer trusted Republicans, understood the president’s strategy – if he had disavowed the public option, Republicans would have targeted the next major element of the bill.
That was their last interaction before the tumultuous August recess, when Grassley returned home to Iowa and pushed some of the most extreme charges leveled against Democratic health care plan.
By early September, top Democrats were convinced bipartisanship would never happen. And in October, Reid made a decision to cut the cord – initially against the advice of the White House, which was still wooing Snowe – by introducing a Senate bill with a public option that allowed states to opt-out, rather than Snowe’s public option “trigger.”
Snowe, who has said Reid assured her in September that he would go with the trigger, was lost for good. So was any hope of bi-partisanship.
Immediately after President Barack Obama announced a bipartisan health reform summit, Democrats and Republicans made clear they have almost no expectation the half-day meeting can break a bitter yearlong standoff.
The two parties are staking out positions that leave them completely at odds even before they sit down.
Republicans say they’re open to compromise — as long as Obama tears up the House and Senate bills, restarts the legislative process and drops several key parts of his wish list.
Democrats say, not a chance.
And in fact, Obama hopes to walk into the Feb. 25 summit with an agreement in hand between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a final Democratic bill, so they can move ahead with a reform package after the sit-down.
House Republican leaders delivered a letter to the White House Monday that included a list of pointed questions that they would like answered before the meeting at Blair House, such as whether Obama would give up on using reconciliation, a way to pass health reform in the Senate with just 51 votes.
“If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate,” the letter read.
So what’s the point? A jaded Washington wondered how a single meeting — in front of live TV cameras, no less — could change the fundamentals of the debate.
Many concluded it won’t.
“Good luck with that,” said New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, playing the role of Democratic skeptic to the president’s proposal. “The GOP has been the ‘party of no’ all year. Republicans have made a tactical decision not to cooperate, and they’ve even called health care reform Obama’s Waterloo.”
Republicans and Democrats said it was too soon to lay out their plans for the meeting. But already, their respective strategies seemed to be taking shape, with both sides gearing up to use the summit as yet another forum for political point-scoring.
For Obama, it fits neatly into his post-Massachusetts strategy of painting the GOP as do-nothing obstructionists. The Republicans have spent the year almost uniformly opposing Obama’s agenda — and being rewarded by voters for doing it.
Now Obama wants to use the meeting to call them out in public, to question whether they have any plans to fix the nation’s health care system and any willingness to help him do it. The White House is eager to draw a sharper contrast with Republicans in the months leading up to the 2010 election, and clearly sees the meeting as a good start.
The summit also gives Democratic congressional leaders a new deadline to reach an agreement on their bill, which has been stalled since the Massachusetts Senate special election.
But more than that, Democrats hope the summit could provide them political cover to go it alone on a party-line vote if Republicans say they won’t provide any votes for an Obama-style health fix.
“The president wants to show his openness one last time before Congress completes their work on the bill,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA and a veteran health care reform advocate.
And for Republicans, who learned of the summit only an hour before Obama announced it during a pre-Super Bowl interview on CBS Sunday, they plan to call on the president to scrap a politically unpopular bill and break it into parts, arguing that Americans have rejected the go-big approach to health care reform.
Congressional Republicans moved quickly Monday to frame their next debate with Obama after their last back and forth with the president — a seemingly impromptu, nationally televised town hall at the House Republicans’ retreat late last month in Baltimore from which Obama came away with some much-needed momentum.
In the letter Monday to White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Minority Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said that Republicans have been asking the president for a meeting to talk health care since May, with no success.
The two GOP leaders questioned whether Obama would open up the meeting to dissenting views and state officials who are resisting national reform. They also want to include discussion of a government report that shows the Democrats' current plan wouldn't lower costs for most Americans - and may make health care more expensive.
In response, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement that made clear Obama isn’t abandoning the current legislation.
“He’s been very clear about his support for the House and Senate bills,” Gibbs said. “The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process, and as recently as the State of the Union Address. He’s open to including any good ideas that stand up to objective scrutiny.”
Still, it’s hard to see where the parties can find common ground, if the Democratic bills are the starting point.
Republicans have fundamental objections to the main pillars of Democratic health reform, including cuts to Medicare, tax increases on wealthy individuals and the health care industry and a mandate on individuals to buy insurance.
Even Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate who was the only Republican to vote for the bill in the Finance Committee, has said Democrats need to start over.
But Stuart Butler, vice president of domestic and economic policy research at the Heritage Foundation, said Republicans need to do more than that — and put Obama on the defensive.
“It is politically dangerous for Republicans,” Butler said. “They have got to come forward with a very clear vision of what they want to do and why what the president is doing now is not acceptable to the American people.”
Republicans should commit to working with Democrats on incremental reform if Obama agrees to start over, he said.
“That puts the hot potato back in the president’s lap,” Butler said.
Butler sees potential for agreement in several areas. The Democratic bills include ideas championed for years by Republicans, but often not to the degree that the GOP would like.
Obama supports lifting the tax exemption on employer health benefits, as do Republicans, who would return the money to uninsured Americans through tax credits to purchase insurance.
Republicans also want to empower states to do more on health care, which is a provision included in the Senate bill.
And Obama last year said he was open to looking at ideas to curb medical malpractice lawsuits – a key Republican goal. But Republicans aides say that even if Obama endorsed a tort reform component, that alone wouldn’t be enough to win GOP support for the Democratic plan.
“The only constructive discussions will start with a blank sheet of paper,” said Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a doctor and the chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee who sparred with Obama in Baltimore. “Enacting positive health care reform still remains possible, but it will require the president to accept that his plan is a nonstarter with the American people.”
Republicans would like Obama to embrace the House leadership plan, which would lower premiums for people who already have insurance, but does little to expand coverage for those who don't.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a moderate who was one of the last holdouts on the bill, said she welcomed the president’s bipartisan gesture, but warned that Democrats should go only so far in accommodating Republicans.
“This meeting should not be an excuse to start over,” Landrieu said. “It should help us pave a road to the finish line.”
President Obama and House GOP Leaders promised greater efforts to step back from the partisan brink Friday, acknowledging that Washington's toxic political climate has made it increasingly tough to tackle major problems.
The pledge was immediately called into question, however, as the two parties repeatedly expressed sharply differing viewpoints during a rare meeting at a House Republican retreat in Baltimore.
Obama accepted an invitation from House GOP Leaders to address their caucus. His speech Friday was followed by an often pointed question-and-answer session.
"House Republican leaders are grateful for Obama's willingness to come ... and have a frank and honest conversation," said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana. "We welcome the dialogue with the president."
The president accused Republicans of frequently mischaracterizing his policy proposals, particularly in the health care debate.
Republicans, in turn, complained the White House and congressional Democrats had ignored their ideas, locked them out of the policy-making process and unfairly labeled them as obstructionists.
"Both sides can take some blame for a sour climate on Capitol Hill," Obama said, adding that Democrats and Republicans need to be careful in choosing their rhetoric. "A ton of civility instead of slash and burn would be helpful."
The president highlighted what he said was problematic GOP rhetoric on his health care proposals. Republicans, he said, had characterized the proposed program as some "kind of Bolshevik plot."
In fact, he said that much of his plan was similar to what Republicans had proposed during the failed Clinton-era push to overhaul health care.
Both sides need to "close the gap a little bit between rhetoric and reality," the president argued. Calling his health care plan "some wild-eyed plot to impose big government in every aspect of our lives" leaves little room for bipartisan negotiation, Obama said.
The president questioned how Republicans could negotiate in good faith after using such rhetoric without exposing themselves to conservative primary challengers.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he tried to be honest about differences over administration proposals.
"I truly believe a government takeover of health care ... is the essence of their bill," Boehner said.
Obama conceded there's been a failure on his part to "try to foster better communications even if there's disagreement."
He has promised regular meetings with GOP leaders in the future. Boehner welcomed the gesture but said it is equally important for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to give Republicans a greater role in the legislative process.
Bipartisanship "isn't about taking one little Republican idea and throwing it in a 2,000-page bill," he said after Obama argued that Democratic leaders had taken GOP proposals into account in the health care debate.
"If you're really serious about building a bipartisan product ... you need to do it from the beginning."
Republicans criticized the president for failing to fulfill a promise to televise all the health care negotiations on C-SPAN. Obama called the criticism "legitimate" but noted the overwhelming majority of committee hearings on the legislation had been conducted in front of TV cameras.
After the bills had cleared the committees, however, it became a "messy process," he conceded.
"I take responsibility for not having structured it in a way where it was all taking place in one place that could be filmed," he said.
Obama and Republicans strongly criticized each other on a range of issues tied to taxes and spending.
GOP leaders said Obama's $862 billion stimulus plan had been ineffective and repeatedly urged the president to consider an across-the-board tax cut.
Obama said it would be wrong to slash taxes for the richest Americans or the banking sector in a weak economy. He also argued that the stimulus program had saved key jobs in GOP districts across the country.
"There is not a single person in here who, had it not been for what was in the stimulus package, wouldn't be going home to more teachers laid off, more firefighters laid off, more cops laid off," he said.
"The component parts of the Recovery Act are consistent" with what many Republicans say are important, he said.
The stimulus helped in terms of "rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in."
The president said he agrees with the GOP emphasis on fiscal responsibility but hinted that Republicans could do more to help control spending, including curtailing legislative earmark requests for their own districts.
He also said he is willing to work with Republicans on the enactment of a line-item veto.
"There's not a president out there that wouldn't like that," he said.
Despite their disagreements, both sides agreed the day's dialogue was a step in the right direction.
"I hope that the conversation we begin here doesn't end here, that we can continue our dialogue in the days ahead," Obama said.
The day "went very well," Boehner replied later. "There are issues we do agree on" and Republicans will work to find "common ground."
We should "set aside perhaps the things that the president believes in that we philosophically don't, but if there is some common ground we ought to go ahead forward with those," said Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia.
Friday's meeting, he said, was "the kind of discussion, frankly, that we need to have more of."
Welcome to the BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog. (Established 2008)
My name is Laurel. (Author & Publisher)
I Blog with a focus on POLITICS, Business, and occasionally Entertainment.
FACTS ABOUT LAUREL:
Wife,
Mother of a U.S. Soldier,
Sister,
Woman of GOD,
Loyal Friend,
Creative,
Blood-related to a nationally known Charlotte Politician.
Black Female, Intelligent,
Married,
Love to Travel,
Credentialed by the RNC and DNC.
Political Blogger/ Commentator
Grassroots Activist,
PROFESSIONAL STATUS:
Credential Political Blogger/ Commentator,
Registered Independent Voter
Original Native of BROOKLYN, NY
Currently reside in CHARLOTTE, NC
I’m Nice but don’t get it twisted because my Mind is Sharp!
Since You’ve Chosen to Visit and Read the Contents of this Blog by Personal Choice, and of Your Own Free Will,
Please don’t ask me to Compensate you for Expressing individual commentary/ Posted Articles, which are protected by the First Amendment, citing Freedom of Speech & Freedom of Expression.
No Intentionally Malicious Slander, Libel or Defamation of Character content will be published and I will always Credit all Sources.
NOTE TO ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS, APPOINTED OFFICIALS & PUBLIC FIGURES:
Per the Landmark U.S. Supreme Court Case: 1964 case of New York Times v. Sullivan………
The Public has a Right to Criticize the People who Govern them, so the least Protection from Defamation is given to Public Officials. When officials are accused of something that involves their behavior in office, they have to prove all of the above elements of defamation and they must also prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice.” (For a definition of actual malice, see the “History of Defamation and the First Amendment, below.”)
People who aren’t Elected but who are Still Public Figures because they are influential or famous — like Actors, Actresses, Movie Stars, Singers & Entertainers, Journalists, TV Hosts, Bloggers, etc., — also have to Prove that Defamatory statements were made with Actual Malice, in most cases.
To the Associated Press and other Media Organizations:
When I use your Content Links., I’m also citing the Fair Use Doctrine (Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107) for further Copyright permission.
Posts and Links published on Black Political Buzz are not endorsed by Black Political Buzz Blog Author Laurel’s Employer, nor the Employers of other Black Political Buzz employees.
This includes Links, Posts and Comments posted on Black Political Buzz’s Facebook and Twitter account pages.
Comments, Links and Opinions of site visitors are Independently-Owned and not endorsed by Black Political Buzz employees, Blog Author Laurel or Laurel’s Employer.)
(No Personal Offense intended) Please know that Black Political Buzz is not responsible for nor do I endorse Requests for Donations from Third Parties on this Blog.
I will Only Endorse Requests for Donations made on behalf of BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ Blog for Business Purposes & Operating Expenses.
I will also Only Endorse Requests for Donations on behalf of Legitimate Politicians and Legitimate Political Candidates. PERIOD!!
If anyone else or another Organization wishes to post a link to Request Donations, I am NOT endorsing ANY of those Requests!
Unless I receive a personal Request to do so and I have Professionally Confirmed that the Third Party Organization or Charity is indeed a Legitimate Entity.
NOTE: Anyone who chooses to give to any Third Party Organization NOT Endorsed by BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ is doing so at his or her own risk.
BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ does NOT Discriminate against Politicians, Political Candidates, Organizations or Charities based on Race, Color, Nationality, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Religion, Faith, Disability, Political Affiliation, Creed, Education, Social Status, Age.
This disclaimer applies to ANY and All requests for Donations on this Blog. Thanks for understanding. Again No Personal Offense intended.
For Story Tips….Corrections…….. or Requests for Endorsements:
Please contact me via e-mail: blackpoliticalbuzz@gmail.com
or via my Facebook page: facebook.com/blackpoliticalbuzz
Thanks for stopping by
God Bless
Laurel @BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ
LINKS: POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE & INFORMATIONAL SITES
.jpg)
