GOP rejects Obama's compromise on health care, wants 'new approach'

USA Today: "President Obama offered to add a handful of Republican ideas to his 10-year, $950 billion health care plan Tuesday but was rebuffed and urged to start over.The letter from Obama to the GOP signalling his interest in four specific Republican health reform ideas was met with an icy reception from Republican leaders. ...  'We were surprised and disappointed with your latest proposal to simply paper a few of these common-sense proposals over an unsalvageable bill,' wrote Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky." (Wolf and Fritze, 3/2).

Roll Call: McConnell "encouraged" Democrats to forgo the use of budget reconciliation rules to advance the overhaul package. "'The American people are asking us for step-by-step reforms that target cost and expand access, not a couple of commonsense ideas layered over a rewrite of one-sixth of the economy,' McConnell wrote. 'We respectfully encourage you to consider a new approach to reform'" (Drucker, 3/2).

The New York Times Prescriptions blog on other GOP pushback: "Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who was cited in Mr. Obama's letter to Congressional leaders on Tuesday, has issued a statement that's more of a billy club than an olive branch. … 'The flawed Medicaid policy in the Senate bill is a disgrace for everyone who needs access to health care because it gives 15 million people a false promise by putting them in Medicaid where they'll face challenges finding providers who will see them,' he said in his statement. There's no question Medicaid won't be able to provide adequate access'" (Herszenhorn, 3/2).

Politico Live Pulse printed House Republican Leader John Boehner's response: "There is no reason to lump sensible proposals into a fundamentally-flawed 2,000-page bill with taxpayer funding for abortion and more than 150 new federal programs, boards, and commissions that put bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. The American people want the President to start over with a clean sheet of paper on step-by-step common-sense reforms to lower health care costs, and with this letter, he has officially said 'no,'" Boehner wrote (Frates, 3/2).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.