President Obama praises BPC's plan for reforming health care

In today's remarks at the House Republican Issues Conference, President Obama praised the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) plan for reforming health care, entitled: "Crossing Our Lines: Working Together to Reform the U.S. Health System," as a bipartisan health care proposal that is worthy of consideration by both Republicans and Democrats. According to President Obama, the plan, which was developed by former U.S. Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and Bob Dole, members of the BPC's Advisory Board and Leaders' Project on the State of American Health Care, is "pretty similar" to the legislation currently being considered by Congress.  The President urged bipartisan cooperation in reforming the U.S. health care system and said, "We've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality."

Quotes from President Obama's remarks:

"The component parts of this thing are pretty similar to what Howard Baker, Bob Dole and Tom Daschle proposed at the beginning of this debate last year.

"Now, you may not agree with Bob Dole and Howard Baker and Tom -- and certainly you don't agree with Tom Daschle on much ... but that's not a radical bunch. But if you were to listen to the debate, and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot."

"And so I'm thinking to myself, 'Well, how is it that a plan that is pretty centrist...'

"No, look, I mean, I'm just saying -- I know you guys disagree, but if you look at the facts of this bill, most independent observers would say this is actually what many Republicans -- is similar to what many Republicans proposed to Bill Clinton when he was doing his debate on health care.  So all I'm saying is we've got to close the gap a little bit between the rhetoric and the reality."