Obama’s call for a health ‘summit’ with the GOP

What happened

President Obama threw down a challenge last week to Republican congressional leaders on health-care policy, proposing a Feb. 25 bipartisan health-care summit at which Republicans and Democrats would share ideas for reform. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor derided the summit as “a dog and pony show,” and Republican leaders indicated they might not attend unless Democrats scrap the bills passed by the Senate and House and “start over.” Obama, however, insisted that the bills serve as the basis for discussions at the half-day summit. The White House says it is “open to Republican ideas,” said Michael Cannon, a policy expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, “but the Republicans’ one idea is to kill the bill.”

Some Republicans point to an alternative plan advanced by Rep. Paul Ryan, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, which would cut health-care costs by essentially privatizing Medicare, the federal health-insurance program that covers 45 million mostly elderly Americans. But Republican leaders, who previously condemned Democratic plans for more modest cuts to Medicare, have not lined up behind that proposal. The government last week released estimates that health care grew to a record 17.3 percent of the economy last year, as health-care spending rose by $134 billion. The number of Americans lacking health insurance rose to 49 million. Yet polls show that most Americans oppose the Democratic reform package. “The public has soured on the process,” Obama admitted.

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What the editorials said

The summit is a sham, said The Wall Street Journal. The White House has no intention of negotiating on most provisions in the existing Democratic bills; the summit’s sole purpose is to resuscitate Obamacare “by suggesting that the choice is between it and GOP ideas.” Democrats still hope the House can pass the Senate version of the bill, said The Economist. Then the Senate would adjust the bill through reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate. But given procedural obstacles and skittish centrist Democrats, reform “looks increasingly undoable.”

It sure would be useful to hear what the Republicans have to offer, said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. After spending months “frightening elderly voters with made-up ‘death panels’ and phantom Medicare cuts,” Republicans can now explain Ryan’s “radical” plan to privatize Social Security and Medicare, forcing the elderly to shop for their own health insurance from for-profit companies. Let’s see how well that sells in the “environment of fear” they’ve created.

What the columnists said

Obama has two goals, said Jonathan Chait in The New Republic Online. First, he plans to use the televised summit to create a sense of transparency about reform and eliminate the perception of “backroom deals.” Second, he’s approaching Republicans the way he handles foreign enemies such as Iran, pretending to honor their goodwill before he “exposes their disingenuousness.” By showing that Republicans have “no serious proposals” to tackle the health system’s growing problems, Obama hopes to create political cover to pass the Democratic package through the reconciliation process.

Republicans do have a proposal, said Yuval Levin in National Review Online, and it is utterly incompatible with the Democrats’ plan. Republicans want to move toward a “genuine individual market,” with price signals and consumer choice promoting quality and efficiency. Democrats want to move toward “socializing insurance coverage,” using government to enforce quality and lower costs in one big system. These goals take the country in opposite directions. “Liberals think the health-care system is in crisis,” said Matthew Continetti in TheWeeklyStandard.com, but “conservatives do not.” Given that gulf, Obama’s call for “bipartisan compromise is a dream.”

Obama’s no dreamer, but he is a poker player, said David Corn in PoliticsDaily.com. His summit is entirely a “bluff,” designed to put the spotlight on Republican obstructionism and buy time for congressional Democrats to work around the hurdles blocking final legislation. But bluffing will only get Obama so far. At some point, “he will just have to play the cards he has.”