look at this arrogance ..obama just thinks hes the shiznit.
Obama Tells McCain ‘Election’s Over’ at Health Summit (Update1) Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email |
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By Kristin Jensen and Catherine Dodge
Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) --
Barack Obama repeatedly reminded Republicans that he’s the president as he pushed them to come up with ways to work together on legislation overhauling the U.S. health-care system at a bipartisan summit today.
Republicans from Virginia Representative
Eric Cantor to Tennessee Senator
Lamar Alexander said they’d be willing to find common ground as long as Obama abandons his almost $1 trillion plan to cover more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Senator
John McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 election, used his time to detail “unsavory” deals in the Democratic legislation.
“We’re not campaigning anymore,” Obama told McCain, an Arizona Republican, when he finished. “The election’s over.”
McCain replied, “I’m reminded of that every day.”
Obama is using the summit to try to break an impasse that has jeopardized one of his top domestic priorities. Republicans say the
plan has been
rejected by both his party and the public. House Republican Leader
John Boehner of Ohio assigned lawmakers to “fact-check misstatements” from Democrats at the meeting.
“I’d like to make sure that this discussion is actually a discussion and not just us trading talking points,” Obama said as the forum began at Blair House, across the street from the White House. “I hope this isn’t political theater, where we’re just playing to the cameras and criticizing each other.”
Company Stakes
At stake is a plan that would give insurers such as Indianapolis-based
WellPoint Inc. and drugmakers including New York-based
Pfizer Inc. millions of new customers while requiring them to make contributions to the biggest U.S. health-care overhaul in 45 years. Insurers agreed to new rules; drugmakers would help Medicare patients afford their medicines.
Obama tried to find areas of accord during the daylong session, saying Republicans and Democrats agree that
costs are out of control. Both parties want to prohibit insurers from dropping people who have bought coverage, and they want to extend the coverage of dependent children to a higher age.
Still, much of the discussion focused on what some lawmakers called a “philosophical” disagreement between the two parties over how much government regulation should be exerted in medical care.
“We don’t want to sit in Washington and mandate all of these things,” said Representative
Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican.
Interstate Insurance
Among the issues the group tackled was allowing insurance to be sold across state lines. Representative
Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, said the Democrats’ plan to allow states to form compacts only creates bureaucracy. She said Americans should be allowed to buy coverage from anywhere they like.
Obama said there may be a way to bridge the differences once new health-insurance exchanges are set up and national plans might be allowed. “We want competition,” he said. “We just want minimum standards.”
Lawmakers cited the case of a WellPoint unit increasing rates in California to illustrate the need for more controls on the insurance industry.
The insurer sought the rate rise to boost profits and cover costs ballooned by executive pay and corporate retreats, Representative
Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, said at a hearing yesterday, citing internal company documents.
WellPoint Chief Executive Officer
Angela Braly said the proposed increase was driven by surging costs and a recession that has forced healthy people to drop coverage.
Reconciliation
Barring a breakthrough with Republicans, Democrats may move along party lines to pass legislation with a budget process known as reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority vote. That idea also drew fire from Republicans.
“We’ll have to renounce jamming it through in a partisan way,” said Alexander. “If we don’t, then the rest of what we do today will not be relevant.”
Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid of Nevada said Republicans have used reconciliation on major issues such as tax cuts and a welfare-system overhaul.
Obama’s plan, released Feb. 22, relies mostly on the Senate bill. With reconciliation, Senate Democrats could pass what lawmakers call a “fix” to their measure with 51 votes. The House would also pass the fix, along with the original Senate bill. Democrats control 59 votes in the 100-member Senate.
Premium Costs
When Alexander said the legislation would raise the cost of health-care premiums, citing numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Obama took exception.
The president said premiums would go down for current plans, yet the changes in the bill might encourage people to buy better policies that would cost more than what they have but less than they were before. Alexander told him he believed Obama was wrong and would provide him with details.
“I’m pretty certain I’m not wrong,” Obama said. “I promise we’ll get this settled before the day’s out.”
Senator
Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who’s also a medical doctor, raised the issue at the top of the list for many lawmakers in his party: medical malpractice. Coburn said hundreds of billions of dollars are wasted each year because doctors order unnecessary tests for fear of lawsuits.
“We are risk-averse to the tort system and the extortion system that’s out there today in health care,’ Coburn said.
He also raised the possibility of having ‘‘undercover patients” to root out fraud.
‘I’m the President’
Obama frequently used his role as moderator to respond to Republican talking points, allowing him to control the discussions. At one point, Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell objected that Democrats had spoken for 52 minutes, while Republicans had only talked for 24.
Republicans later sent an e-mail saying Democratic lawmakers and Obama had talked for 108 minutes and Republicans for 56.
“Let’s try to have as much balance as we can,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said.
Obama said he hadn’t counted his own time for the Democrats because “I’m the president.”
To contact the reporters on this story:
Kristin Jensen in Washington at
[email protected];
Edwin Chen in Washington at 1844 or
[email protected]
Last Updated: February 25, 2010 16:10 EST
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