“There was absolute unity,’’ the top Senate Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada, said after the talks. “Different ideas were expressed, but every idea was that we understand that before year’s end we’re going to get comprehensive healthcare reform.’’
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama told the senators that passing health overhaul legislation would be among the most important things they would ever do in the Senate - and that signing it would be among the most important things he would do as president.
Reid and the other senators gathered around him also said healthcare overhaul would happen without bipartisan support if it wasn’t possible.
“The preference is do it together,’’ said Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is the chief Senate shepherd of a healthcare bill. “The American people do not like partisanship. But the American people also don’t like groups of people trying to kill something that should be done, should get passed.’’
Meanwhile, the White House turned to the Internet to hit back at a Web posting that purports to show Obama explaining how his healthcare overhaul plans eventually would eliminate private insurance.
The three-minute White House video features Linda Douglass, a former network television correspondent and now White House Office of Health Reform communications director, sitting in front of a computer screen showing the widely viewed Drudge Report website. That site carries a series of video clips from a conservative blogger who strings together selected Obama statements on healthcare to make it appear he wants to eliminate the private health insurance business.
“Well, nothing can be farther from the truth,’’ Douglass says in the video, adding that the blogger is “taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a very false impression.’’
On its blog, the White House also urges supporters to keep an eye out and alert it to anything “on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy.’’
READER COMMENTS »
View reader comments » Comment on this story »