More Talk, No Deal at Health Summit

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President Barack Obama (center) hosts a bipartisan meeting to discuss health-care legislation at Blair House, across the street from the White House, on Thursday.

WASHINGTON—After hundreds of hours of congressional debate, a summer of rowdy town hall meetings and a Massachusetts election that upended all political calculations, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders spent Thursday talking still more about reforming the U.S. health care system.

At the Table

Who sat where, and what was said

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The nationally televised session stretched over more than seven hours and, to no one's surprise, yielded no new agreement, although lawmakers strove to maintain an atmosphere of decorum and cooperation—even as they aired their warring views.

The president tried to project the sense he was searching for a middle ground. "We might surprise ourselves and find out that we agree more than we disagree," Mr. Obama said at the start, before adding what seemed like a judgment rooted more in experience than hope: "It may turn out, on the other hand, there's just too big of a gulf."

Republicans, only emphasizing the gulf, said they'd like to wipe out the last 13 months from the record and start over. "This is a car that can't be recalled and fixed," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) said.

The partisan divide was revealed in a stark, if gently amusing, exchange between the president and the man he defeated in the 2008 election.

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) ticked off what he called "unsavory" deals in the Democratic health-care bills. Mr. Obama snapped: "We're not campaigning anymore. The election's over." Mr. McCain, his 2008 presidential rival, laughed: "I'm reminded of that every day."

 

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At the end of the session, the president suggested that if no deal was at hand, Democrats would press forward alone and let voters be the ultimate judge. "That's what elections are for," he said.

Thursday's health-care summit featured scores of talking points, as well as substantive debate that laid bare the sharp philosophical differences between the parties over how to reshape an industry that makes up 17% of the U.S. economy.

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