Obama meets with Matheson on health care

Utah's Rep. Jim Matheson and six fellow Democratic rebels on health-care reform were summoned to the White House Tuesday for a three-hour, arm-twisting meeting seeking to persuade them to support quick passage of Democratic proposals.

But Matheson said afterward that the group will still "take whatever time it takes to have a good bill," and will "not be rushed by a deadline." House Democratic leaders have said they want to pass reform out of committee by July 31, when the House starts its summer recess.

"It was a long meeting," Matheson said afterward. "It was almost three hours long. The president wasn't in there the whole time, but the president spent about an hour with us, and then we met with White House staff and other folk for a couple of hours beyond that."

Matheson himself would not call it an arm-twisting session, but rather "a constructive meeting" to "discuss a lot of issues out there and be candid."

Invited were seven moderate "blue dog" Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "The seven of us represent a bloc of votes that actually would preclude the bill from moving out of committee if we all vote no" along with Republicans, Matheson said.

Matheson said he and fellow blue dogs found some encouraging signs from President Barack Obama during the meeting.

"One is the president reaffirmed his two major objectives that have to be achieved for him to support a bill." Matheson said they include that a bill "has to be deficit neutral, can't add to the deficit," and that it "would have to have third-party validation that it has an impact on reducing growth in health-care costs in the future."

Matheson added, "Those happen to be fundamental issues for me and my fellow blue dogs as well because if we don't get a handle on the explosive growth of health-care costs in the country, we all have a problem" and the current system could collapse.

Matheson said much work remains to bring the various sides together on issues ranging from how to contain costs, create incentives for quality care, help small business and how to make Medicare more efficient.

Matheson said the energy committee and subcommittee chairmen overseeing the bill were also in the meeting and Obama "moved them toward agreeing that an independent entity is going to help find savings in Medicare." But he said, "We feel we have a number of issues that haven't been addressed."

Matheson added, "This is a truly complicated, challenging issue," and he would be happy to skip summer recess to stay in Washington and work on it.