At the conclusion of the summit, Obama emphasized that there was much common ground in his proposal and the ideas put forward by Congressional Republicans, noting that many of the concepts they favored for reform were incorporated in his approach. He laid out a deadline of six weeks to see if there would be ways to bring Republicans on board with his proposals, hinting he might turn to Senate parliamentary maneuvers to bring some fixes to the measure up to an up or down vote if they failed to come on board.

“I’d like the Republicans to do a little soul searching and find out if there are some things you would be willing to embrace that get to this core problem of 30 million people without health insurance and dealing seriously with preexisting conditions,” he said. “If we can’t [agree] then I think we’ve got to go ahead and make some decisions and then that’s what elections are for.”