WASHINGTON » When he jousts with congressional Republicans over health care policy during a televised meeting on Thursday, President Barack Obama will seek to portray his adversaries as sharing many of the broad goals of his legislation and also strive to unify congressional Democrats to press ahead and adopt a bill, senior White House officials and leading Democrats say.

But Obama, top White House advisers and congressional leaders of both parties are under no illusion that the meeting will resolve more than a half-century of disagreements over health care policy. Instead, Democrats say, they hope the event will create a climate that helps revive their legislation in Congress and prove to the American public that they are willing to hear out Republicans and even adopt their ideas.

“;We may not be able to resolve all the disagreements, but we ought to be able to thrash out areas of broad agreement,”; said David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser. “;The fact is, there are broad areas of agreement on elements of this, and hopefully that will become apparent here.”;

Axelrod added, “;Sitting side by side working through these issues is better than not sitting side by side and dealing with distortions.”;

Republican leaders have not yet committed to attending the session and have said they doubt the sincerity of Obama's bipartisan overtures, given his refusal to discard the Democrats' legislation and start over. But senior Republican aides said that party leaders planned to participate and that a chief goal would be to portray the president as defying the will of the American people if he continues pushing for an expansive and expensive bill.

The meeting is fraught with risk, and also offers potential rewards, for each side.

White House officials said that by Monday they would unveil Obama's own comprehensive proposal, focused on uniting Democrats who spent much of the past year deeply divided on many points. Administration officials and congressional Democrats have expressed hopes that the meeting will help generate support for a plan to attach health care legislation to a budget bill, which would prevent a Republican filibuster in the Senate.

Even some senior White House officials are divided about whether a comprehensive bill is still viable and privately voice uncertainty about the outcome of the meeting.

Many Democrats in Congress said they doubted that it was feasible to pass a major health care bill with a parliamentary tool called reconciliation, which is used to speed adoption of budget and tax legislation. Reconciliation requires only 51 votes for passage in the Senate, but entails procedural and political risks.

“;If we took a vote now, we would not have 51 votes for that approach,”; said a Senate Democratic aide. “;The president would have to do a major sales job. He is the only person who has the political capital to do it. But his focusing on health care means that our efforts to focus on jobs are likely to be drowned out.”;

Obama and his fellow Democrats are also pursuing a parallel political strategy: to use the televised event to put Republicans and their ideas on display. It is a gamble that Americans will actually watch an in-the-weeds discussion of health care policy and conclude either that Republicans are unwilling to negotiate or that their policy ideas—emphasizing tax incentives and state innovations—will not work.

“;This is now the crucial hour for health reform,”; said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. “;This is the make-or-break time, and the public is going to get to see it on TV. The impressions people get on Feb. 25 can be impressions that people take into the voting booth in November, so they can say, 'Who put us first? Who said it was more important to do what was right for America, rather than just bicker?' “;

Even as Republicans have denounced the meeting as “;political theater,”; they, too, sense an opportunity.

Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip, said in an interview that he believed Republicans ought to attend—not to negotiate with the president, but to use the session to make the case to the American people that the Democrats' bill ought to be thrown out.

“;Republicans, I think, are up to the task of explaining why this bill is not for America,”; Cantor said. “;We will be there to present a better way.”;

Some of the initial jockeying at the meeting is likely to be over the basic question of what goals policymakers should focus on.

Obama has said he will challenge Republicans to show how their proposals would provide insurance to more than 30 million Americans over 10 years, which is what the Democrats' bills are projected to do.

But Republicans have argued for months that broadly expanding coverage is not a realistic goal, given the weak economy, and that lawmakers should focus on reducing health care costs.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Americans did not want an expensive bill. “;Anyone who thinks they want a bill that raises a half-trillion in new taxes and slashes Medicare for our seniors simply isn't listening,”; McConnell said in a statement on Saturday.

Before the policy debate, however, come the practical arrangements. White House officials and congressional Republicans are negotiating details of the meeting, including seating charts, who will speak and in what order, the number of staff members who can attend and the positioning of television cameras.

However the meeting plays out, Obama and his team will still face a formidable challenge in trying to muster the needed votes. The House adopted its health care bill on Nov. 7 on a vote of 220-215, with one Republican, Rep. Anh Cao of Louisiana, in favor.

But since then, one Democratic supporter (John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania) has died, another (Robert Wexler of Florida) has resigned, and Cao has said he would vote against the bill, meaning some Democrats who opposed the measure in November would need to switch sides to pass it.

Obama, in his weekly radio and Internet address on Saturday, urged congressional leaders to attend the meeting in good faith.

“;I don't want to see this meeting turn into political theater, with each side simply reciting talking points and trying to score political points,”; he said. “;Instead, I ask members of both parties to seek common ground in an effort to solve a problem that's been with us for generations.”;

Some Democrats expressed skepticism. “;There's hope for a breakthrough here, but the odds of that are not very good,”; said a top Democratic aide who has worked for years on health care. “;This is a media event.”;

Democratic congressional leaders are far less interested than the White House in playing nice with Republicans and instead are looking to the president to twist the arms of rank-and-file Democrats to produce the needed votes.

“;Once we get a bill,”; a Senate Democratic leadership aide said, “;we are still going to need a heck of a lot of help from the administration to help us get a bill through the House and Senate.”;