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President Obama opened his much anticipated health care forum on Thursday by calling on Democrats and Republicans to "focus not just on where we differ but focus on where we agree," as Republicans called for the president to scrap his bill and start over.
Mr. Obama, speaking to lawmakers from his seat at the table they shared, not from a podium or with a teleprompter, used his opening remarks to make the case that reforming the health care system is critical to the nation's economy. He made no opening bids, but instead called on the two parties to abandon their talking points and engage in a real unscripted discussion, even as he conceded that it might not result in a bridging of the deep philosophical divide between them.
"I don't know that those gaps can be bridged and it may be that at the end of the day we come out of here saying, 'Well, we've had some honest disagreements,'" the president said, adding, "but I'd like to make sure that this discussion is actually a discussion and not just us trading talking points."
The forum, which the White House intended as a back-and-forth between Republicans and Democrats on health care policy, is an extraordinary last-ditch effort by Mr. Obama to revive his health care bill. The White House is betting that the public will tune in and conclude Democrats have better ideas for reforming health care; Republicans are betting the same. At the least, it will provide the viewers a glimpse of relatively unscripted conversation between the two parties on an issue that has divided them for decades.
In his own remarks, Mr. Obama got personal, recounting the story of his mother's death from ovarian cancer, and the illnesses of his daughters: Malia, 11, who was rushed to the hospital after complaining she couldn't breathe and, the president said, was diagnosed as having asthma, and Sasha, 8, who had a potentially dangerous case of meningitis as a baby.
And the president tried to turn the tables a bit on Republicans, citing from their own past statements in which they described the need for reform. "John McCain's talked about how rising health care costs are devastating to middle class families," he said, referring to his Republican opponent for the presidency, who was sitting in the room. "Chuck," he said, turning to Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, you've been working on this a long time."
But Senator Lamar Alexander, the Tennessee Republican who was selected to give his party's opening remarks, called on the president to renounce "reconciliation," the controversial parliamentary maneuver that would enable Democrats to pass the president's bill with only Democratic votes.
Mr. Alexander called on Mr. Obama and the Democrats "to renounce jamming" the bill "through in a partisan way."
Mr. Obama made clear he was not going to do so; he told Mr. Alexander that he preferred to "talk about the substance" rather than legislative process -- a sign that he is reserving his options to push the bill through Congress using only Democratic votes if he cannot get any from Republicans.
And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spoke after Mr. Alexander, rejected the idea of scrapping the bill and starting over, saying the American people can't wait for health reform any longer.
"They don't have time for us to start over," she said. "Many of them are at the end of the line."
Polls show that Americans seem to be split on Mr. Obama's bill. When asked if they support the legislation, a majority of Americans say no. But its individual components -- barring insurance companies from refusing coverage based on pre-existing conditions, for example -- are popular. Mr. Obama's task is to remind Americans of what they like in the bill, while beating down the Republicans' assertion that it is a government takeover of health care.
The event, which is being carried live on C-Span 3 and the cable news networks, is scheduled to last for six hours, until 4 p.m. It will cover four major topics: health care costs, insurance reforms, deficit reduction and extending coverage.
For weeks, Republicans have been deriding the event as "political theater," and to some extent, it is. But it is also an extraordinary moment -- a president with his number one legislative priority tantalizingly within reach, waging an unusual live televised conversation with the minority party in a last-ditch attempt to keep it from slipping out of his grasp.
Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have talked about making health care a right, not a privilege, and Mr. Obama has long said that he would not be the first president to set out such an ambitious goal, but that he intended to be the last. But with Republicans unified in opposition to his plan, his only hope now is convincing Congressional Democrats -- and the public -- to get behind it.
White House officials blanketed the airwaves this morning, trying to convey Mr. Obama's message that rising premiums, including the recent announcement of rate hikes in California, make passing an overhaul an imperative. Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama's press secretary, said on MSNBC that Democrats could muster the votes to pass the legislation.
"I think there are the votes to pass health care reform because the American people know that the course we're on is not sustainable," Mr. Gibbs said. "We know that insurance companies now are mailing out letters for premium increases next year. Those letters in California landed in mailboxes saying that health care was going to go up 39 percent, ten times the rate of health care inflation."
Even before the session began there were intense negotiations about the optics, and it was clear as lawmakers began filing in that Mr. Obama would indeed have the home court advantage. The White House and Republicans had agreed to an O-shaped table, so that the president and Republicans would be viewed on equal footing.
But Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will be seated in front of a marble fireplace, flanked by flags, giving it the obvious appearance that they are at the head of the table. At precisely 9:59 a.m., the president walked across the street from the White House to Blair House.
As to what impact the debate will have, it may depend on how many people actually watch. Even some health policy analysts were skeptical; six hours of back-and-forth on cost containment and insurance industry regulation may not exactly make for compelling television.
"A lot of us have jobs," said Jim Kessler, the vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic research group here. "The fact of the matter is that most people are not allowed to watch TV on the job."
