Conceding there was work still to be done, President Obama said today he was cautiously optimistic that the Senate will pass a healthcare overhaul bill. 
 
 Speaking after an hourlong meeting with top Democrats, Obama said the Senate bill met his guidelines of bringing more coverage to people while cutting medical costs long term. He also said the bill was deficit-neutral. 
 
 "I am absolutely confident if people know what's in this bill and if the senators know what’s in the bill ... it will pass," Obama said. 
 
 The president, who has healthcare overhaul the centerpiece of his domestic program, said he knew that not every lawmaker will be happy with the final product. 
 
 "The final bill will not include everything that everyone wants," Obama said but urged lawmakers to work together in the coming days. 
 
 Earlier posts are here. 
 
 -- Michael Muskal ||||| “Now, let’s be clear,” Mr. Obama said after the hourlong private meeting. “The final bill won’t include everything that everybody wants. No bill can do that. But what I told my former colleagues today is that we simply cannot allow differences over individual elements of this plan to prevent us from meeting our responsibility to solve a longstanding and urgent problem for the American people.” 
 
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 The meeting underscored the sense of urgency for Mr. Obama, who has made passing a health care overhaul his highest legislative priority. He is leaving on Thursday night for Copenhagen to attend a conference on climate change, and he acknowledged that “there are still disagreements that have to be ironed out” and “work to be done in the next few days.” 
 
 In the Senate, Democratic leaders said they were confident they could resolve those disagreements because liberals seemed willing to make concessions to get a bill passed. The latest version of the Senate legislation omits a new government-run insurance plan to compete with the private sector, and the expansion of Medicare to allow people as young as 55 to buy into it. 
 
 “We are very disappointed,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, who is a leading liberal in the Senate. Still, Mr. Brown said, “I’m going to vote for the bill — there’s too much at stake.” 
 
 Speaking to reporters after the White House session, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, cast the liberals’ dilemma this way: “Many of us who are on that side of the caucus really felt we had to weigh on balance what remains. And what remains is dramatic, and we just don’t want to lose the opportunity, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” 
 
 The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, is still putting the bill together, but he and other leading Democrats sounded confident after the session with Mr. Obama that they would get the 60 votes they need to overcome staunch Republican opposition. Mr. Reid sketched out a timeline in which he would move Friday to bring the debate to a close and would hold final votes on the bill on Dec. 23 or 24. 
 
 Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, said: “We don’t have 60 votes locked in yet. But we will get 60.” 
 
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 In the House, though, liberals were none too pleased. Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California and co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said it would be “very difficult” for her to vote for legislation that does not include a government plan, dubbed a public option, or a Medicare buy-in. 
 
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 “Without that and without any public option, I don’t see what we are offering the American people,” Ms. Woolsey said. “We are not offering any significant competition to the insurance industry. Premiums could skyrocket.” 
 
 As Democrats debated among themselves, Republicans made clear that they would fight the bill every step of the way in the Senate. “Our Democratic friends are about to walk off a political cliff here,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Tuesday. “Do we really want to change one-sixth of the economy without a single Republican vote?” 
 
 One Republican being courted by the White House, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, said Tuesday that she could not vote for the measure in its current form. “This bill is getting better,” she said, “but it’s still too deeply flawed for me to support it.” 
 
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 Other issues flared Tuesday as well. The Senate rejected a bipartisan proposal to allow imports of prescription drugs from Canada and other countries where prices are often lower; the provision fell 9 votes short of the 60 needed. The Senate also turned down a Republican effort to revise the bill to eliminate any tax increases for individuals with incomes less than $200,000 a year and for couples with incomes less than $250,000. At the same time, Democrats are trying to negotiate a compromise on abortion coverage that would help win the vote of Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska. 
 
 At the White House session, Mr. Obama tried to appeal to lawmakers’ sense of history. Mr. Baucus, who took notes on a paper napkin, quoted the president as saying: “This is the moment of our legislative lifetimes. This is why people run for public office, to be here at the creation of something really big.” 
 
 Just how big, though, remains an open question, especially among liberals in the president’s party. The session was called after Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, announced over the weekend that he could not vote for the measure unless the Medicare expansion was stripped from the bill. 
 
 Several people who attended the session recounted this exchange: 
 
 “What’s happening is not any fun for me,” Mr. Lieberman said. 
 
 Mr. Brown, who has championed the public option, turned to Mr. Lieberman and said, “You know, Joe, it’s not fun for us either.” 
 
 At that point, Mr. Obama stepped in. 
 
 “Why don’t we all begin to have some fun?” he said. “Let’s pass the bill.”
– President Obama met with Senate Democrats behind closed doors today to make a final push for health care reform, then emerged with a note of cautious optimism. "I am absolutely confident if people know what's in this bill and if the senators know what’s in the bill ... it will pass," he said. The meeting comes with the legislation on suddenly shaky ground after Joe Lieberman torpedoed a compromise on Medicare and the public option. "The final bill will not include everything that everyone wants," said Obama, who urged lawmakers to work together in the coming days, notes the LA Times. Earlier today, Lieberman suggested he's ready to vote for the overall measure, now that the Medicare buy-in and the public option are all but dead, reports the New York Times.