The Blair House health reform summit held Thursday concluded with minds largely unchanged. This is unfortunate. Republicans used the occasion to articulate real and legitimate concerns many have with existing Democratic reform proposals while President Obama and those of his party present expressed concerns of their own.

While their points of view differed, it is clear that both sides agree that reform is prudent in some form. In a just world, this would wipe away the liberal lie that Republicans intend only to be obstructionist. While both sides distort and mislead to score cheap points in politics, real policy development does actually occur. President Obama and Democratic senators have asserted that the Senate bill and the modificaions proposed to it by the administration include Republican ideas. However, to use a phrase that got then-candidate Obama into some trouble on the campaign trail in 2008, including Republican ideas in legislation disliked by congressional Republicans is tantamount to putting lipstick on a pig.

If it is indeed true that Republicans and Democrats agree on some aspects of reform, then those should be the basis for what the President seeks to have passed into law. This means abandoning the existing legislation, and working from scratch on the basis of those points of agreement. If the present proposal put forward by President Obama was as urgently needed as Democrats suggest, then it would come into effect far sooner than is written in the legislation itself. By 2012, if the economy has recovered, then with more people employed, the number of uninsured will presumably go down anyway, making the need for broader reform slightly less urgent.

No one in the Obama administration nor in Congress has answered a fundamental question coloring the reform debate. Until it is clear why an overhaul of the entire health care system is needed to insure ten percent of the U.S. populace, reform will be slow to advance. A side-by-side comparison of existing reform plans-Republican and Democratic-reveals that only around thirty million additional people would be insured if these changes were enacted. In a nation of over three hundred million, thirty million is not that significant.

With existing proposals, such as Senator Coburn’s bill,  Republicans have provided a framework for actually embracing reform. Both pieces of legislation, no doubt imperfect as they may be, provide a framework with which to test the obstruction hypothesis. The question moving forward is whether or not President Obama is willing to risk unpopularity with the firmly statist left by actually building consensus and getting reform implemented. In a move truly representative of change, Barack Obama once suggested he would forego a second term if it meant actually achieving health reform. Sadly, for the President of the United States, reelection seems to be a more pressing goal.

Last 5 posts by James Kane

• A November to Remember - November 8th, 2010
• On hope and fear - October 18th, 2010
• Expecting Different Results - September 12th, 2010
• A glaring omission on Iraq - August 31st, 2010
• Employing a losing strategy - August 7th, 2010