A Bipartisan Meeting on Health Reform: The Invites Are Out (White House Blog)

[jefferson_dem]

A Bipartisan Meeting on Health Reform: The Invites Are Out
Posted by Jesse Lee on February 12, 2010 at 04:35 PM EST

On Tuesday the President discussed the upcoming bipartisan meeting on health reform, saying "Let's get the relevant parties together; let's put the best ideas on the table. My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say this is the right way to move forward, even if I don't get every single thing that I want."

Moments ago the invite (pdf) was sent out from Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius – here is the full text:

Dear Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Representative Boehner:

We are writing to ask that you join President Obama for a bipartisan meeting at the Blair House on February 25 to discuss health reform legislation.

We have seen again in recent days that when it comes to health care, the status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable. The proof is right in front of us: just last week, a major insurer, Anthem Blue Cross, announced plans to increase premiums for many of its policyholders in California by as much as 39 percent on March 1.

As the President noted this week, if we don’t act on comprehensive health insurance reform, this enormous rate hike will be "just a preview of coming attractions. Premiums will continue to rise for folks with insurance; millions more will lose their coverage altogether; our deficits will continue to grow larger."

Now is the time to act on behalf of the millions of Americans and small businesses who are counting on meaningful health insurance reform. In the last year, there has been an extraordinary effort to craft effective legislation. There have been hundreds of hours of committee hearings and mark-ups in both the House of Representatives and Senate, with nearly all of those sessions televised on C-SPAN. The Senate spent over 160 hours on the Senate floor considering health insurance reform legislation and, for the first time in history, both the House of Representatives and Senate have approved comprehensive health reform legislation. This is the closest our Nation has been to resolving this issue in the nearly 100 years that it has been debated.

The Blair House meeting is the next step in this process. The session will begin at 10:00 a.m. and be broadcast live in its entirety. Although it is impossible to include every House Member or Senator who has played a pivotal role in the health care debate, the President is inviting the most senior House/Senate bipartisan leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of the committees that oversee health insurance reform legislation in both chambers. A complete list of this group is attached. The President would like each of you to designate an additional four Members to attend the meeting and be available to participate. It is also important that each of you have one staff member specializing in health care policy in the meeting.

We will have a representative from the Office of Management and Budget to provide technical assistance, and hope that representatives from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation will also be able to attend.

In addition to the President, attending and participating on behalf of the Administration will be the Vice President, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, Director of the Office of Health Reform.

The President will offer opening remarks at the beginning of the meeting, followed by remarks from a Republican leader chosen by the Republican leadership and a Democratic leader chosen by the Democratic leadership. The President will then open and moderate discussion on four critical topics: insurance reforms, cost containment, expanding coverage, and the impact health reform legislation will have on deficit reduction.

Since this meeting will be most productive if information is widely available before the meeting, we will post online the text of a proposed health insurance reform package. This legislation would put a stop to insurance company abuses, extend coverage to millions of Americans, get control of skyrocketing premiums and out-of-pocket costs, and reduce the deficit.

It is the President’s hope that the Republican congressional leadership will also put forward their own comprehensive bill to achieve those goals and make it available online as well. As the President said earlier this week:

I’m looking forward to a constructive debate with plans that need to be measured against this test: Does it bring down costs for all Americans as well as for the Federal Government, which spends a huge amount on health care? Does it provide adequate protection against abuses by the insurance industry? Does it make coverage affordable and available to the tens of millions of working Americans who don't have it right now? And does it help us get on a path of fiscal sustainability?

These are priorities that we all share, and the President is looking forward to examining with you and your colleagues how we can best achieve the most effective reform possible.

Sincerely,

Rahm Emanuel
Assistant to the President

Kathleen Sebelius
Secretary of Health and Human Services

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/12/a-bipartisan-meeting-health-reform-invites-are-out

[ipaint]

1. The majority of Americans want medicare for all and if not a strong public option.

They are getting neither. This televised meeting should a rub good bit of salt in that fresh wound.

Can these pampered representatives be any further out of touch?

[jefferson_dem]

2. How, then, do you recommend we move the "health care reform" ball down the field?

So far, the only people i've heard complain about this meeting are those who want to kill reform (i.e. Repugs and their mouthpieces).

[ipaint]

4. First it is supposedly "insurance " reform and

second it reforms very little. I don't know who you talk to but in my working class neighborhood the majority want a canadian style system and at the very least a public option with teeth. Not one trusts insurance companies or republicans and now increasingly democrats. From tauzins early one on ones with the president to the hand off of the bill to a paid prostitute for the ins. cartel- Baucus, to the presidents sudden amnesia on the public option, most folks I talk to know they are being played for fools.

This attempt at transparency is a day late and many dollars short. Trying to dress up the fact we, american citizens, had another chance stolen from us to do something good for one another and ourselves by ins. business lobbying, dirty politicians and backroom deals, will only shed light on who exactly is at fault.

It is clueless to think it is only the enemy and their mouthpieces who think this whole reform debacle was not only handled badly but was a complete sham from the start.

[babylonsister]

3. Here's the whining gop response:

The GOP has now responded, saying the format leaves many “unanswered questions.” John Boehner spokesman Michael Steel emails:

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/

“This leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Are they excluding governors, state legislators, CBO, and rank-and-file congressional Democrats who have opposed Obamacare and are the reason the president hasn’t had a bill to sign? Are Congressional Democrats still working behind closed doors with White House support on a ‘pre-negotiated package’ that can be rammed through Congress after the summit via legislative tricks? Or are they willing to start over with a blank sheet of paper? We need answers before we know if the White House is more interested in partisan theater than in facilitating a productive dialogue about solutions.”

[gkhouston]

5. The WH has already answered most of those questions. They simply weren't the

answers the GOP wanted to hear. What I want to know is, "Will there be tigers?" :shrug: