CQ Health Beat: Summit - Dog and Pony Show or Start of Something Real?

From The Congressional Quarterly Health Beat: The notion that the groundwork could be laid for overhauling something so complex as the U.S. health care system in a three-hour summit meeting might seem absurd, but if bipartisan good will is built up slowly through a series of small face-to-face encounters and exchanges, then the breakout sessions on a sunny afternoon at the White House may have been a start.

The event was an attempt by President Obama to get the health overhaul debate off to a markedly different start than the one that many analysts say marred the attempt by President Clinton to enact universal coverage. Shut out of early deliberations by the Clinton administration, representatives of the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and organized medicine joined the nation’s top lawmakers at the Thursday afternoon event.

Breakout sessions to begin the discussions in earnest were bookended by remarks from the president who emphasized the high stakes involved and what a huge accomplishment it would be if participants could pull off an overhaul after decades of failed attempts by previous national leaders to guarantee coverage and control costs.

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