Congressional Republicans are worried Democrats will use a procedural move that Republicans have used in the past to jam health care proposals through the Senate with a simple majority, a process known as reconciliation.
 
“If that’s what happens and that remains to be seen I think that will certainly send a signal to us as Republicans and a lot of people in the country that idle chatter is what we have been engaging in rather than firm and real negotiations," Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, D-W.Va., said.
 
Sixteen percent of Capito’s district does not have health insurance. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the biggest obstacles for the state’s uninsured are high premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
 
“I think we all agree we need health care reform. There are areas - pre-existing conditions, portability, affordability, that we need to go to,” Capito said. “I’d like to see us go to the areas, and not diverge into some of the more expansion of government programs, and all of those kinds of things that I think are the hot button issues we can’t agree.”
 
A letter is circulating through Congress that would allow the Senate to pass a public option, or a government insurance plan, with 50 votes.
 
West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller has led the fight to get a public option included in health care legislation. It appears he may be stepping away.
 
“I don’t think the timing of it is right,” Rockefeller said.
 
Rockefeller and about 39 other congressional lawmakers participated at the Blair House bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. He wants to require insurers to use more of the their profits on health care, and does not want any company to turn away patients who have pre-existing conditions.
 
“The health insurance is the shark that swims just below the water and you don’t see that shark until you feel the teeth of that shark,” Rockefeller told President Barack Obama and the other attendees.
 
Republicans in attendance, like Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, pushed the President to allow people to buy health insurance coverage across state lines. She said many of her constituents live within 15 miles of the Tennessee line.



“If you want to empower patients in front of those insurance companies, take the power away from them then give them the ability to buy a policy that suits their needs,” Blackburn said.  

President Obama said he supports the idea, but says the federal government would have to set new regulation standards.

Democrat Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., joined Republican John McCain, R-Ariz., and asked the President to pull out the special deals in the Senate bill. He also challenged his colleagues to ensure the legislation does enough to cut the federal deficit. 



“We’ve heard a lot of folks try to outdo each other in deficit reduction. I welcome that competition especially if it is backed up with votes cause it is easy to talk tough on this, it is harder to deliver,” Cooper said. 



Cooper - whose district has a 14 percent uninsured rate - also called on the President to act quickly on cleaning up waste and fraud in Medicaid and Medicare to save the government insurance programs from going bankrupt. 



The GOP message was clear: Republicans want a fresh start.
 
“This is a car that can’t be recalled and fixed," Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said about the entire health care bill. “Let’s start over.”

President Obama refuses to scrap a bill that he says lawmakers have been spent too much time on.  
 
“I suspect Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner are going to have a lot of arguments about procedures in Congress about moving forward,” President Obama said. “And the truth of the matter is, is that, politically speaking, there may not be any reason for Republicans to want to do anything.” 
 
 

AUDIO:  Tenn. Lawmakers Attend Health Summit