It's been an interesting first session of the Health Care Summit put on by the White House, as President Obama has urged lawmakers to find ways to "bridge the gaps" on health policy that exist between the two parties. For any news reporter or producer worth his or her salt, there were only a few exchanges that really merit extra attention at this point.

The first two speakers were the President and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who took 35 minutes total, reminding everyone that a 5-6 hour summit with the President, Vice President, and over three dozen members of Congress is not going to be short.

Mr. Obama began by calling for compromise on health reform, singling out a number of GOP lawmakers by their first name, and talking about things they agreed on in terms of health reform.

The first fireworks came soon after, when Sen. Alexander gave a methodical rebuttal, urging Democrats not try to jam a health reform bill through the Congress.

The President and Alexander clashed over the details of a Congressional Budget Office report which both sides have used to buttress their arguments. 

The report clearly says that Democratic health plans would make premiums go down (the Dems love that line) but it also than says that the availability of government subsidies would likely lead people to buy more expensive plans, so their overall costs would go up (the GOP highlights that.)

"This is an example of where we need to get our facts straight," the President said curtly.

Alexander tried to defuse the situation by saying he would send Mr. Obama his specifics in writing, but the President seemed to be miffed.

Things got fairly boilerplate after that, with both sides trotting out their talking points for the most part.  Then Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) got the chance to speak.

McCain rattled the President's cage on some of his health reform related promises from the 2008 Presidential race.

"The election is over," Mr. Obama said flatly.

"I'm reminded of that every day," McCain said with a big grin on his face, as McCain zeroed in on what he said were a series of backroom political deals that were unseemly.

"The American people care about what we did and how we did it," McCain said, as the President tried repeatedly to break into his observation.

It was an exchange that will be on every evening news show tonight, simply because of the people involved.

At times, the discussion did almost break into something useful - like real negotiation - such as when Mr. Obama and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) went back and forth on the role of government in the health care system.

As several of my colleagues and I have observed, if you had about 20 of these sessions, one every week for four months or so, you might actually slowly move towards bipartisan agreement on health reform.

But that seems an unlikely possibility.

We'll see what the rest of the day brings.