Obama plans bipartisan meeting to break health-care impasse

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Sunday said he would convene a televised half-day bipartisan health-care session at the White House this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their impasse.

The president made the announcement in a CBS interview during the Super Bowl pregame show, capitalizing on a vast television audience as Obama set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their health-care ideas and show whether both sides are willing to work together.

"I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward," Obama said from the White House Library.

The president challenged Republicans to attend the meeting with their plans for lowering the cost of health insurance and expanding coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. Republican leaders said they welcomed the opportunity and called on Democrats to start the debate from scratch, which Obama said he would not do.

The move by Obama comes after weeks in which the administration has appeared uncertain about how to proceed on his top domestic priority since Republicans won the Senate seat previously held by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. House and Senate Democrats had been increasingly at odds over what the bill should say, how to move ahead and, in some cases, whether to continue at all.

The idea for the meeting, set for Feb. 25, was reached in recent weeks, aides said, as part of the White House strategy to intensify its push to engage congressional Republicans in policy negotiations, share the burden of governing and put more scrutiny on GOP initiatives.

"If we can go step by step through a series of these issues and arrive at some agreements," Obama said, "then procedurally, there's no reason why we can't do it a lot faster than the process took."

Obama surprised his rivals last week by requesting that a session with House Republicans be open to cameras. The result was a spirited, 90-minute question-and-answer session that many in the White House viewed as a key success for Obama.

In making the gesture Sunday, the president in effect is calling the hand of Republicans who had chastised him for not honoring a campaign pledge to hold health-care deliberations in the open, broadcast by C-SPAN, and for not allowing Republicans at the bargaining table.

The bipartisan meeting also could give Obama an opportunity to display the command on health-care issues he showed at the meeting with Republicans. The administration believes the public is supportive of many provisions in the bill — particularly taking away insurance bans for pre-existing conditions — but that the debate was overshadowed by a messy legislative process.

The president offered a number of questions that his party would have for the Republicans.

"How do you guys want to lower costs? How do you guys intend to reform the insurance market so that people with pre-existing conditions, for example, can get health care?" Obama said. "How do you want to make sure that the 30 million people who don't have health insurance can get it? What are your ideas specifically?"

The question for Obama is how much — if at all — he is willing to give on some concepts Democrats have agreed on, or whether he is using the meeting to lay the groundwork for another effort to push the legislation through without GOP votes.

Obama did not indicate what he was willing to give up, nor did he chart a legislative strategy for moving a bill through Congress. House and Senate Democrats were hoping to resolve their differences in the legislation, aides said, and present a unified plan at the meeting.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a statement that he welcomed the bipartisan meeting and called on the president to begin the dialogue "by shelving the current health spending bill."

"The fact is Senate Republicans held hundreds of town halls and met with their constituents across the country last year on the need for health-care reform, outlining ideas for the step-by-step approach that Americans have asked for," McConnell said. "And we know there are a number of issues with bipartisan support that we can start with when the 2,700-page bill is put on the shelf."

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said he was looking forward to the session, but joined McConnell in calling for a fresh start to the health-care debate.

"The problem with the Democrats' health-care bills is not that the American people don't understand them — the American people do understand them, and they don't like them," Boehner said in a statement. "The best way to start on real, bipartisan reform would be to scrap those bills and focus on the kind of step-by-step improvements that will lower health-care costs and expand access."

New York Times reporter

David Herszenhorn contributed

to this report.