Pages

Advertising

Health Care Summit: Live Feed [UPDATES]

Thursday, February 25, 2010


Feel free to use this as a thread to discuss today's health care summit specifically, and health care reform in general.

UPDATE: Rich Anthony's thoughts on the health care summit are here. It concludes:
Hopefully, today’s health care summit will lead to a change in the attitudes of Frank Wolf, Eric Cantor, John Boehner and others. But honestly, I’m not holding my breath. The sad fact is, Republicans have spent the past year obstructing progress, talking about how they want health care reform to be President Obama’s "Waterloo" and how they want him to "fail," while Americans suffered under our current health care delivery system.

That’s why it’s now time to cut to the chase. Since Republicans have no intention of being constructive on this issue, unless of course you consider "tear it up and start all over again" to be constructive, it’s time for Democrats – the people we worked so hard to elect in 2006 and 2008 – to use their overwhelming majorities in Congress to get this job done. It’s time for Democrats, and that includes Senators Warner and Webb, to strongly support the use of reconciliation to pass health care reform with affordability, portability, a robust public option, competition in the industry, and mechanisms to keep insurance companies honest. Republicans can claim all they want that reconciliation is not the right way to go, but as usual they are being hypocritical, as they themselves used reconciliation to "jam through" George W. Bush’s agenda back in the early 2000s. Now is not the time to surrender when we are on the brink of victory. Now is the time to lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.

UPDATE #2: Eric Cantor says people are "allegedly" wronged by our health care system? That is some seriously FUBAR...uh, "stuff" right there. Tens of millions of people without health insurance, tens of millions more without adequate coverage, and thousands of people dying every year (plus many more going bankrupt!) because of it is "allegedly" wronged? As I said, seriously FUBAR.