Obama Throws GOP Some Bones

President Barack Obama speaks to a small crowd at the Savannah Technical College on creating jobs and the economy March 2, 2010, in Savannah, Georgia.

Image: Stephen Morton/Getty Images

President Barack Obama threw some bones to Republicans today in the wake of last week’s White House health care summit, but there’s little chance these tweaks will win any GOP support for his reform bill.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama said he was open to these Republican proposals:

• Using medical professionals for undercover investigations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud;
• Increasing grants to states for demonstrations projects on alternatives to resolving medical malpractice lawsuits;
• Exploring ways to increase reimbursements to doctors who participate in the Medicaid program; and
• Making clear that health savings accounts could be offered through new insurance exchanges that would be offered to individuals and small businesses.

The president also wrote that he wants to remove provisions from the Senate health care reform bill that gave special treatment to Medicare Advantage customers in Florida and guaranteed that Nebraska would be reimbursed for the cost of expanding Medicaid. During the summit, Senator John McCain cited these provisions as examples of the “unsavory dealmaking” that greased the wheels for Senate passage of the bill.

As he did in his remarks at the end of the summit, the president rejected Republican pleas to start over on health care reform.

“Both parties agree that the health care status quo is unsustainable,” Obama said. “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,” the president wrote.

That’s true, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as the saying goes.

The president will give a speech tomorrow outlining his strategy for getting health care reform passed.

Since he won’t get help from Republicans, he’ll have to rely on Democrats to push the same bill through both the House and Senate. Even if Democrats use a budget-related procedure known as reconciliation to whittle down what they need in the Senate for victory to 51 votes—instead of the 60 that’s normally needed to beat a filibuster—they still face a problem in the House: Some Democratic members who voted for health care reform the first time around are wavering now.

Republicans, meanwhile, will continue trashing the bill, despite Obama’s contention that “the Republican and Democratic approaches to health care have more in common than most people think.”

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor issued this statement in anticipation of Obama’s remarks.

“If the president simply adds a couple of Republican solutions to a trillion-dollar health care package that the American people don’t support, it isn’t bipartisanship, it’s political cover,” Cantor said.

“I will be listening to hear whether the president will abandon plans to empower Washington bureaucrats over patients to decide what constitutes acceptable coverage, drop the mandates to force individuals to buy more expensive insurance, and stop using budget gimmicks to hide the real price of this legislation, which will end up costing Americans trillions of dollars,” Cantor said. “I hope that the president removes the job-killing tax increases and cuts to Medicare that will take away benefits that seniors currently receive.”

So much for Obama’s assessment that the summit “was a good opportunity to move past the usual rhetoric and sound bites that have come to characterize this debate.”

The rhetoric only will get fiercer as the president gets closer to actually getting this legislation passed.