By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ two U.S. senators said they came away with a private meeting with President Obama on Thursday encouraged by his openness to different ideas on reforming health care but still not ready to fully embrace his plan.
Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor were among 17 key Senate Democrats who met with Obama a day after the president outlined his goals for health care reform in an address to a joint session of Congress.
To get a bill containing his objectives out of the Senate, Obama is likely to need the support of senators like Lincoln and Pryor who have expressed reservations about some elements of his plan, such as the cost and a government-run insurance option.
“He was very open-minded and listened to our concerns and ideas, and I thought they were very well received by him,” Lincoln said shortly after the meeting at the White House. “I thought there was a lot of consensus there.”
“I think it was very constructive,” Pryor said. “The president was asking us where we thought health care is in the Senate, and if we had concerns, etc., and we spent most of the meeting talking about the costs and the savings in his plan.”
Lincoln said Obama did not change her opposition to a public option, and she was pleased to hear him say it was not the cornerstone of his plan.
“I think he reiterated what he said last night, which is that it’s a means to an end, it’s not the solution to the problem, and that there might be something out there that would be helpful in terms of creating competition in the marketplace … but I don’t think he’s wed to any name,” she said.
“There’s lots of different things out there, there’s a co-op, there’s a trigger, there’s a fallback, there’s a nonprofit plan,” she said.
Pryor said he was glad to hear Obama pin down what he means by a public option — a limited government plan that only about 5 percent of the uninsured would have access to — but he said the senators told the president the proposal’s chances were slim.
“My guess is that there are not votes to do it in the Senate, even a very modest public option like what he’s talking about,” Pryor said.
Asked if he would vote for a limited public option, Pryor said, “It depends on how it was structured. I would really have to look at it in detail.”
The senators said they still worried about the cost of health care reform, even though Obama pledged his plan would not increase the deficit.
“I have concern about the costs of the plan, and it turns out some of my colleagues do as well. We spent a lot of time talking about our concerns,” Pryor said.
“He’s going to give us some numbers from his staff, they’re going to look at some numbers and try to get them over to us so we can understand where he says he’s going to save a lot of money through his plan. We need to see those and make sure that those numbers are real,” Pryor said.
Lincoln said she pressed the issue of making sure reform would be deficit-neutral and curb spiraling costs.
“He agreed that that’s got to be a part of what we’re doing,” she said.
The meeting came on the same day that the U.S. Census Bureau released new data showing about one in six Arkansans lacked health coverage in 2007 and 2008. The data also showed that 54.8 percent of Arkansans had employer-provided coverage, down from 61 percent in 2000 and 2001.
The statistics underscore the need for reform, Lincoln and Pryor said.
“If we do nothing on health care reform, that trend will continue,” Pryor said. “It may accelerate.”
