Is Obama Serious With His HealthCare Summit?

That's the question centering around his health care summit: Does he seriously want to use it, as he claims, to pursue bipartisan solutions, or is it merely political theater designed to benefit Democrats and harm Republicans?

The Republicans claim the latter.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/81031-kyl-dems-have-already-decided-how-to-force-health-bill-through

Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona on Sunday threw more cold water on the chances that his party would cooperate with a Feb. 25 healthcare reform summit at the White House, protesting that Democrats already seem poised to force a bill through Congress.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Kyl echoed a claim that congressional Republicans have made for the past week, that President Barack Obama and House and Senate Democrats intend the summit as a public display and not a genuine dialogue. He quoted a recent Wall Street Journal article that asserted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has “set the stage” for using reconciliation to pass the bill. That controversial legislative tactic could allow the bill to pass the Senate with 51
votes instead of 60 as usually required to break a filibuster.

“What that means is they’ve devised the process by which they can jam the bill through that the president has supported in the past, without Republican ideas in it,” Kyl told CNN host Candy Crowley.

But is that true? Have Democrats already decided to pass the existing partisan bill? It's looking more and more like that's what they want to do, yes.
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump

Friday brought yet more reason to think health care reform has a pulse--still a bit weak, perhaps, but getting stronger.

That passage seems to suggest one of the following is true:

1) House and Senate leadership have nearly finished negotiating a new compromise version of their legislation. The text the administration plans to post will reflect that compromise.

2) House and Senate leadership are still struggling to come to an agreement, if not over what to pass then in what sequence to pass it. The administration hopes this promise will force them to wrap things up.

Actually, conversations with various sources over the weekend make me think the truth is some combination, although I'm relying on people who, in many cases, admit they're not entirely sure themselves. (That could be because not very many people know--or because I'm just not talking to the right people.) But it seems to me that either interpretation would constitute progress of a sort.

So the language of the summit invitation assumes that either the House and Senate have reached a compromise, or the President is hoping the deadline will enable them to reach that compromise.

Without Republicans. So yes, it does appear that the summit is just a ploy to advance the current bills and harm Congressional Republicans.

Here's how one insider analyzed the situation:

I think the White House is calling the bluff of leadership for both parties, in both houses. The Democratic leadership has consistently said they are quite close to finalizing an agreement, at least among themselves, so this forces them to finalize or cede the power to the White House to make final calls. The Republican Leadership constantly suggests they have ideas for thoughtful reforms that would constrain costs and expand coverage, but their policies to date do neither well or at all. In fact, there is an argument that they would make things worse, particularly for those who need the help the most–older, sicker American citizens. Insisting the Republicans lock in a particular vision forces their hand more than they want and makes them show the world they are divided or show that they are the obstructionists or show their unified policy vision doesn’t do much on the key issues.

As you can see, they hope that the summit will weaken Republicans and strengthen Democrats.

So I will say again that the Republicans should NOT attend this summit as invited. They should send a single representative to present PresBo with some ideas to incorporate. This representative should also deliver a statement that passing the current Senate bill would constitute a rejection of bipartisanship by the Democrats and will worsen the relationship between the parties. Scrapping the current bills is the absolutely mandatory first step towards reaching a bipartisanship agreement. That should be non-negotiable.