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President Barack Obama hosted Republican and Democratic lawmakers at Blair House on Thursday for a health care summit. The seven-hour televised discussion attempted to reconcile differences between the two major parties on proposed health care legislation. Republicans verbalized a willingness to work with Democrats in introducing reforms aimed at insuring those with pre-existing conditions. They nevertheless repeated a preference to start over with a clean slate as opposed to working on compromises within existing bills. Afterward, Democrats described the gathering as positive but vowed to press ahead with reform in Congress. President Obama in soliciting Republican input at the summit did so at the exclusion of Medicare-for-all advocates and their proposals. Meanwhile, as the debate over health care continues nationally, Anthem Blue Cross, despite outcries and Congressional hearings, is planning to go ahead with its controversial fee hikes of up to 39 percent on individual insurance policy holders in California. The drastic rise, set to go in effect on May 1st, have been justified on the grounds of rising costs and the fact that many younger and healthier policyholders have dropped out or reduced their coverage. However, Anthem Blue Cross’ parent company WellPoint Inc. had a reported profit of 4.75 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2009.

GUEST: Jerry Flanagan, Healthcare Policy Director of Consumer Watchdog

For more information, visit www.consumerwatchdog.org.