Obama Health Care Summit Will Yield Little

Obama Health Care Summit

It wasn't exactly the political dog and pony show some critics predicted, but don't look for any groundbreaking political compromise from the highly anticipated, nationally televised bipartisan health care summit, as President Barack Obama said he was looking for.

The summit has been broken into four broad topics: control costs, insurance reform, reducing the deficit and expanding health care coverage, and it does bring some honest debate over legitimate sticking points such as cost containment with insurance companies and how to expand coverage with increasing the deficit. But the deep political divide blocking agreement on health care reform seemed to grow as broad as the Grand Canyon in the summit's early moments.

In an ornate meeting room at the Blair House, President Obama started by calling rising health care costs "one of the biggest drags on our economy" but noted "politics are trumping practical common sense."

Republicans responded by having Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, say that Democrats should scrap the latest proposal and start over "on a blank piece of paper." He might as well have asked Obama to sprout wings and fly out of the room.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi quickly shot down that notion saying too much had gone in to getting America to the brink of comprehensive health care reform. "American families don't have time for us to start over," she said.

Alexander was again rebuffed when he asked Democrats to pledge not to use the tactic known as "reconciliation," which would allow Democrats to pass portions of the measure in a piecemeal fashion and evade Republican attempts to delay or filibuster a vote in the Senate.

Obama sidestepped Alexander's request but let Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada address it head on by saying reconciliation has been used by both parties in the past to pass important legislation.

While I question how much the summit will accomplish, it did provide a chance for Republicans to expose some shortcomings of the massive reform plan.

For example, Republican John McCain attacked the process that allowed seniors in some states, such as Connecticut and Florida, to receive insurance cost breaks that would be unavailable to other state's residents.

McCain made a good point but overall, more than eight hours after the summit began, one got the sense that President Obama did exactly what he said he would do - allow Republicans to voice their concerns and offer changes to his proposal.

The Republicans did a lot of complaining but sat stone-faced and offered few constructive words on how to improve Obama's plan.

Obama was even willing to strip the controversial "public option" provision out of the package to win over GOP votes.

By the looks of Republican comments at the summit, the president wasted his time.