Health Summit Yields No Bipartisan Accord and Sheds Light on Divergent Party Philosophies on Health Care Reform

President Obama and congressional Democrats and Republicans debated health care reform for more than six hours February 25th, but as expected, the meeting did not bring the parties closer to a bipartisan agreement on reform legislation. While participants of the summit found some areas to which there were broad agreement, Republicans stated that they wanted the President to scrap the Senate-and House-passed legislation and White House proposal released on Monday and begin anew with an incremental approach to health care reform. Obama ended the unprecedented, day-long session by saying Democrats and Republicans likely could agree on several reform issues, and he called on Republicans to provide solutions over the next month to six weeks on how to extend coverage to more Americans than under the House GOP bill. If a bipartisan agreement cannot be reached, “then I think we have to go ahead and make some decisions,” the president said. “We cannot have another year-long debate on this.” While some expect the next step will be House and Senate Democrats agreement to the Senate bill and then passage of a "reconciliation" bill with fixes negotiated by Congressional Democrats and the Administration, others are reporting that the President has already prepared a fall-back, scaled down version of health care that would provide coverage to 15 million people rather than 31 million that he might consider should other choices fail to gain enough Congressional support.