Neither side gives ground during health care summit

WASHINGTON - After a day of debate and disagreement, President Barack

Obama

concluded yesterday's unprecedented live talkfest on health care with the bleak assessment that accord between

Democrats

and

Republicans

may not be possible. He rejected

Republican

preferences for seeking a step-by-step solution or simply starting over.

Obama strongly suggested that Democrats will try to pass a sweeping overhaul without GOP support, by using controversial Senate budget rules that would disallow filibusters. And then, he said, this fall's elections would write the verdict on who was right.

"We cannot have another yearlong debate about this," Obama said at the end of a 7 1/2-hour marathon policy session.

Neither side gave much ground, sticking mostly to familiar arguments and talking points. The president urged Republicans to "do a little soul searching," but said majority Democrats would decide quickly how to move forward on a priority that has eluded leaders for half a century.

"This will take courage to do," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in her own closing speech. "But we will get it done."

With the conversation veering between mind-numbing detail and flaring tempers, Obama and his Democratic allies clashed with congressional Republicans over the right prescription for the nation's broken health care system. Though there was much talk of agreement, each side held onto long-entrenched positions that left them far apart. Democrats seek a kind of broad remake; Republicans favor much more modest changes.

"We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. "We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem."

With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats' Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props "that prevent us from having a conversation."

It was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the past year of debate over the health care crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide.

Obama and other Democrats argued that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation's future economic vitality. The president cast health care as "one of the biggest drags on our economy," tying his top domestic priority to an issue that's even more pressing to many Americans.

Obama lamented partisan bickering that has resulted in a stalemate.

And yet, even as he pleaded for cooperation he insisted on a number of Democratic points and acknowledged agreement may not be possible, particularly on the trickiest area of extending coverage to the uninsured and preventing insurers from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

"I don't know frankly whether we can close that gap," he said as he wrapped things up.