While President Barack Obama plans to include Republican ideas into a comprehensive health care reform plan he wants approved by Congress, not everyone is ready to jump on board.

On March 2, President Obama sent a letter to congressional leaders, praising last week’s White House health summit and finding areas of both common ground and lingering disagreement between Republicans and Democrats. Obama said he left the seven-hour meeting, “convinced that the Republican and Democratic approaches to health care have more in common than most people think.”

As a preview of a speech set for later today (March 3), Obama said he is “exploring” four policy priorities identified by Republicans at the meeting: random, undercover investigations of Medicare health care providers; health courts to resolve medical malpractice disputes; increased Medicaid reimbursements for doctors; and expanding the use of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

The president said both parties believe “that reform must be built around our existing private health insurance system.

“I believe that we must hold the insurance industry to clear rules, so they can’t arbitrarily raise rates or reduce or eliminate coverage,” Obama wrote in the letter. “That must be a part of any serious reform to make it work for the many Americans who have insurance coverage today, as well as those who don’t.”

He added that piecemeal reform “is not the best way” to reduce premiums, end pre-existing condition exclusions to coverage or reassuring citizens that they will not lose coverage, even if they lose or change jobs.

Tom Coburn

While praising the president’s overature, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said real reform cannot be achieved by “merely incorporating these ideas into the deeply flawed House and Senate bills.

“I hope the White House and congressional leaders build on the progress we have made and not undermine it with a divisive bill and strategy the American people have already rejected,” Coburn said in a statement.

Coburn, a physician, added that the congressional leadership can now continue to work with Republicans on areas of agreement or attempt an “all-or-nothing” reconciliation strategy “and most likely accomplish nothing.

“Although the president said at the summit that future elections may decide the direction of health care reform, it is important for the majority to acknowledge the reality that the public has already rendered its judgment in polls, elections and town hall meetings,” he said. “By an overwhelming margin, the American people want Congress to abandon the Senate and House bills that will bankrupt our country, fund abortion and ration care and instead start over.”