Health Care Summit Leads to Reconciliation

White House Healthcare Summit Said To Set Stage For Democrats-Only Bill.

Coverage of yesterday's White House summit on healthcare reform (including the lead stories on all three networks) tends to highlight partisan sniping and broad policy disagreements. Ultimately, most analysts agree that yesterday's failure to reach a bipartisan deal sets the stage for Democrats to enact their bill through the tactic known as "reconciliation."

The AP's Ron Fournier (2/26), for example, says that "from its conception, Thursday's healthcare 'summit' was destined to be little more than a stage where Democrats and Republicans would recite their lines and further their political agendas." Thus Obama's was "to cast the Republicans as obstructionists," because he "hopes to ram his proposal past a GOP filibuster." And by "that narrow and cynical scale, the summit was a success."

Along similar lines, on the CBS Evening News (2/25, story 3, 1:00, Couric), reporter Chip Reid was asked whether Obama accomplished "what he needed to do" at the summit. Reid said, "He really did. ... What he really wanted to do was convince the American people...and, wavering Democrats in Congress, that the Republicans are the party of no," and that "he now has no choice but to move ahead with Democrats alone."