More on Health Care Reform Summit

In the invitation to the February 25th Health Care Reform Summit, the White House says the following according to Ezra Klein's Wahington Post blog.

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.

Klein notes that the White House has thus promised completion of a compromise between the reform packages passed by the House and Senate by February 25. The President also seems to be forcing the GOP to come off of merely trashing Democratic proposals and either state and defend a package of their own or admit they don't have one that will meet all of his objectives.

David Herszenhorn reports in The New York Times health care blog Prescriptions that this has drawn fire from House GOP leaders John Boehner (R-OH), Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Mike Pence (R-IN).

House Republican leaders on Friday demanded that House and Senate Democrats halt their ongoing efforts to resolve differences between the versions of major health care legislation adopted by each chamber late last year. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, the House Republican leaders asserted that the efforts by Democrats to reach a compromise plan would undermine negotiations at a bipartisan summit scheduled by President Obama for Feb. 25.

But in their letter, House Republicans suggested that the ongoing work by Democrats to resolve their differences would amount to a “backroom deal among the White House and Democratic leaders” that would “make a mockery of the president’s stated desire to have a ‘bipartisan’ and ‘transparent’ dialogue.”

Klein on the GOP response:

The Republican response to this is that they're demanding that the House and Senate refrain from coming up with any unified plan before the summit, which is sort of an odd argument. In essence, the Republican position is that a free and frank exchange of ideas sounds great as long as the Democrats don't bring their ideas.

The fact that Republicans are making bizarre requests to change the rules of the summit rather than just ignoring the gambit altogether suggests they've not figured out how to deal with the event. This is the first time since the Massachusetts election, in fact, that's it's been them, rather than the Democrats, who've seemed confused. The White House deserves some credit for that, and we'll see if they can keep congressional Democrats in line long enough to press the advantage.

Andrew Sullivan, Jon Cohn and Steve Benen make similar observations.

Stay tuned.

--Ballard Burgher