President Barack Obama opened a last-ditch bid to save his stalled healthcare overhaul today by telling a televised summit that health reform was critical to boosting the ailing economy and emphasising areas of agreement with Republicans.
Mr Obama said he saw significant points of potential agreement between Democrats and Republicans on healthcare reform, despite their differences, as he opened the summit.
"There actually is some significant agreement on a host of issues," Mr Obama said, adding there was some "overlap" between the two parties' ideas.
"I'd like to make sure that this discussion is actually a discussion and not just us trading talking points," Mr Obama said as the forum began at Blair House, across the street from the White House. "I hope this isn't political theatre, where we're just playing to the cameras and criticising each other."
During the summit, Mr Obama repeatedly reminded Republicans he is the president as he pushed them to come up with ways to work together on legislation overhauling the healthcare system.
Senator John McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 election, used his time to detail "unsavoury" deals in the Democratic legislation. "We're not campaigning anymore," Mr Obama told the Arizona Republican when he finished, adding: "The election's over." McCain replied: "I'm reminded of that every day."
The president 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.
After months of heated battles over health care reform in Congress, leaders in both parties held out little hope for compromise at the day-long meeting.
But Mr Obama said he hoped the meeting would produce more than political theatre and partisan finger-pointing. "This is an issue that is affecting everybody, it's affecting not only those without insurance but its affecting those with insurance," he told congressional leaders. "I think this concern is bipartisan."
Republican Senator Lamar Alexander said the healthcare overhaul would mean more taxes, more regulations and less choice for consumers. Republican opposition, he said, represented the will of a majority of Americans.
Mr Alexander urged the president to start the reform initiative over again and not try to jam his own measure through Congress and a wall of Republican of opposition.
"We have to start by taking the current bill and putting it on the shelf and starting with a clean sheet of paper," he said. "This is a car that can't be recalled and fixed."
Mr Obama and his fellow Democrats have no intention of starting over, but the president hopes to influence wavering Democratic lawmakers and rally support among voters who have lost enthusiasm for the effort to reshape the $2.5 trillion US healthcare industry.
The president said the money being spent on healthcare could go to job creation and other vital economic needs.
The bills passed by the Democratic-controlled House and Senate late last year were designed to rein in costs, regulate insurers and expand coverage to tens of millions of Americans.
But efforts to merge them and send a final version to Mr Obama collapsed in January after Democrats lost their crucial 60th Senate vote in a special election in Massachusetts amid broad public dissatisfaction with the healthcare drive.
Mr Obama offered his own version of the healthcare plan on Monday in an effort to break the legislative gridlock, but Republicans immediately rejected it. But the White House also has signalled it would consider backing an effort to ram the bill through Congress using a procedure called reconciliation that would bypass the need for Republican support.
Republicans said they expected the summit could be the first step in launching that process, and Mr Alexander denounced the process and said it should not be used to revamp one-sixth of the economy.
The White House also has a scaled-back alternative plan it could push if a more comprehensive approach fails. It would extend coverage to about 15 million Americans rather than the 31 million envisioned by the larger plan.
Asked as he entered the summit if he had a Plan B, Obama replied: "I've always got plans."
About 40 members of Congress, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, sat around a rectangular table at the summit. The meeting will be broken into sections to discuss controlling costs, insurance reforms, deficit reduction and expanding coverage.
Reuters