In Closing

“Then, it seems, the Democrats will figure out if they can get a bill passed via reconciliation.”
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Weren’t you watching? Dingy Harry said no one mentioned using reconciliation.

“That might make for a good narrative to sell to voters and it might be that Republicans are so ideologically opposed to the Democratic bills that they want no part of them. But starting over? It’s not going to happen and therefore it’s not constructive to suggest it. It’s just not. ”
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So instead, the gop is supposed to give political cover for a bill that the public opposes? Kate, your bias is showing.
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And Kate, remember, Obama conceded that HCR violated two core promises.

Yeah, now that the gabfest is over, how about putting something that will really help into the bill, you know, what’s that called, the “public option”?
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Put that in then argue about why it won’t pass. Or are you afraid that it might actually do so?
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I do think it is safer for them when it isn’t a choice, as long as they can just proclaim that it “won’t pass”.
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I don’t think these clowns really want to debate its merits…

Now dingy Harry can take the cotton out of his ears and pass health care with a majority vote.

I thought Jonathan Chait of The New Republic summed it up pretty well when he explained, after listening to the entire summit, why you can’t discuss health care with Republicans: “You’re debating a brick wall…; you’re trying to have a high-level discussion with people who reply either on debunked claims at best and talk radio-level slogans at worst.”

I’m not sure if those guys are dumb or are pretending to be dumb, but if it’s the latter, they’re great actors.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

It was so pathetic of the republicans to come back to the higher premium CBO non-sense after Obama shut down Lamar Alexander within the first 10 minutes, that tells you they stuck to their talking points. I honestly believed without Obama, the Dems would have lost..but since he was debating acne proned horny boys..the dems won.

Kate, thanks / kudos again to you and KT. Will you two do a huge spread on this in dead-tree (with full credits)? Will you two grab Amy and Jay for drinks? (I’d recommend a sports bar so you all can watch the Games, incl. figure skating if you wish).
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But why wasn’t Snowe invited (no clear answers in last post about her invite)? Is she critical of her R colleagues’ non-ideas? Is she susceptible to a yes vote? Is she playing kissy-face with Biden too much? No Voinovich? He’s no flaming liberal but occasionally goes his own way (except on fighting torture bans just like McCain, but I digress). Are the R’s really so united here? We know the D’s aren’t united at all. Any more insights, Kate (or KT)? Thanks and have a relaxing evening.

Obama’s summary about the philosophical differences in the approach to healthcare was excellent. He also made an excellent point- if the republican bill is put to vote, only then the republicans will vote, but it won’t get any democratic votes. Hence, postponing by 1 year will be as good as postponing by 4 decades. He made it also clear that the democrats will proceed with whatever they have, and face the consequences. That’s what the elections are for! During the couse of the debate, Rangel strongly questioned the relevance of Boehner’s childish preoccupation with the size of the bill in a meeting meant for exchange of ideas.

The GOP could, y’know, try to help improve it into something the public does support? After all, the public clearly states in many polls that it is in favor of health reform.

Add a .50 tax to every fast food order which exceeds 500 total calories. With the millions of those sold every day in America, that would help illuminate the issue, discourage the consumption a little, and toss billions of dollars into the kitty to finance health reform — saw a cool site; Balkingpoints ; incredible satellite view of earth

But starting over? It’s not going to happen and therefore it’s not constructive to suggest it. It’s just not.
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It’s “just not going to happen” because Republicans and Democrats wouldn’t make it happen, if, for some reason the only copy of the Senate and House bills got lost forever, and they had to start over writing new ones.
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That’s the savvy, “political reality” insider-argument that seeks to limit the discussion of the possible to the probable –the probable being what the power players and Conventional Wisdom says it is. That’s the same argument that said it wasn’t constructive to call for an end to funding the Iraq occupation, isn’t it?
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My answer to “pass the bill we have, not the bill we’d like to have” goes like this:

All I know is that, if we were debating the prospect of passing child labor laws that dealt with the issue by

1) attempting to satisfy the demands of parents, by regulating child labor

2) attempting to satisfy the demands of industry, by mandating that children work, but only two days a week

, I wouldn’t care if I didn’t have a plan to pass child labor prohibition going forward. I would argue against that sort of legislation, even if there weren’t a clear path at the time to getting child labor prohibited. Something would not be better than nothing.

There is a very intelligent, very reasonable argument to be made that this bill is crap and probably worse for future health care reform than no bill at all, but that this is the only bill we’re going to get, and Democrats will lose big if it doesn’t pass. If we’re not going to get a better one any time soon no matter what happens, then it’s better to have a sh*t bill and the possibility of a damaged Democratic agenda this term than no bill and no Democratic agenda this term.
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That view has very, very high hopes for the value of the near-term Democratic agenda, and, in my opinion, is contradicted ever-so-slightly by the outcome of the process we just witnessed.
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If the Democrats’ entire electoral success hinges on navigating processes like these, if that’s the only reason why we have to hope for them not to fail to pass legislation nobody believes in, then the near-term Democratic agenda has bigger problems than health care reform. It looks, for all practical purposes, as if there won’t be a “Democratic agenda,” only Democrats in nominal majority power. We’re effectively back to Bush II in the White House, and the Democrats letting the occupations drag on, only this time the impossible-to-overcome veto comes from the Senate minority. What the Republicans want to get done gets done, but their excesses are somewhat limited by the Democratic majority.
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Which leads us back to “But the sh*t Democratic agenda is better than the Republican agenda!“, which is slightly contradicted by the fact that the GOP wouldn’t have proposed and passed sh*t health care reform, they would likely just do nothing about health care until another Democratic Congress and/or Administration came in to pick up the pieces (again).
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Pick which problem you’d like the government to fail at. I’d take the Democrats’ failures rather than the Republicans’ failures, but maybe we can’t count on our fellow citizens in the future to be as partisan as I still somehow am these days.
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The “pass the bill we have, not the bill we’d like to have” line seems to lead quite inevitably to a political Groundhog Day, in which the years 2002, 2004 and 2006 are relived again and again in perpetuity.
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Maybe it might just make sense to start over.

Only if the Demos in Congress are as tone deaf as the liberals are here.

Or how about Dems just holding their breath until they get their way. They won’t let little things like deficits, rising costs, lower services and higher taxes get in their way.

Why stop there? Why not tax everything that moves or we consume. That way we can give everybody Cadillac plans. Oh yeah nobody will have jobs or incomes

SZ:

I think you are correct that it might make sense to start over. There wasn’t enough support for the original bills and even with reconciliation they may not pass.

If you take Obama at his word (at least today) he said everything is on the table, that suggests they should start over. By blending 2 inferior plans you will get the equivalent of trying to build a horse and you end up with a camel.

“But the sh*t Democratic agenda is better than the Republican agenda!”
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I’d say the two are largely symbiotic, perhaps intentionally so given my cynic’s read on the estab’s unified agenda. The democratic leadership (i.e. not liberal) gives new life to the republicans just when it should be attacking them. The dem agenda doesn’t seek to dismantle the GOP political infrastructure or enact progressive legislation of its own. It’s essentially a holding pattern, during which no problems are solved, no coherent narratives are put forth. In the end, all they seem to accomplish is priming the country for its inevitable reversion to Reagan’s America.
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I’d say the next time the GOP is running/ruining the nation, it will be a Groundhog Day moment. We can elect another faux liberal (giving us only horse-racey thrills) or…

Rep Ryan’s comment aside, the Democrats have made a DEFICIT NEUTRAL bill. To achieve it, they accepted both new taxes and “reduced services” by correcting a few flawed programs (while not actually reducing any real services). Therefore, freep, the Democrats are very aware of what has to be sacrificed to achieve their goal.

“Starting over…”?
If it has been going on for so long now, is “starting over” like a different animal or just the same ol’ shtuff?

“Starting over…”?
HA!
From where?
1950?
Yeah, sure.

My take? This wasn’t a “summit” for an exchange of ideas, it was a meeting between the leaders of two gangs before the big rumble. Instead of debating whether it was going to be only chains and knives and no guns, the two sides here just started working their way through their talking points for November.

The Republicans aren’t interested in a compromise solution and it’s hard to believe they really want to truly reform health care, anyway. They could have done it during the Bush years when they were in the majority (and when they used reconciliation to pass things that mattered to them, like tax cuts).

The Democrats aren’t interested in any more compromises. They’re more worried that the compromises they’ve already made will keep them from getting enough votes in their own party to pass something.

I think the President’s goal was to show in a public setting how the members of his party can counter the attacks they’ll get from Republicans during the campaign season, if/when they pass a health care bill. He wanted to show them that it’s possible to defend and support a health care reform package. I think he probably succeeded.

The battle lines are drawn. Now the question is, can Pelosi and Reid find enough votes in their party to pass something.

Obama wins the day with his final remarks challenging Republicans to do “soul searching” and come up with simple ways that they can compromise on a health care bill. He laid out where he would drop some of his priorities and asked the same of the opposition. This is a request most Americans will see as perfectly reasonable and refreshing, but which the GOP will, of course, fail to deliver on. It summed up the day…

http://www.political-buzz.com/

The summit was excellent. Some ask if there was any benefit to it. The main benefit was all of America to see the banter and discussion. This was an uncommon event and we should hope for more. It dipped into the partisan catch phrase sewer occasionally (Boehner most glaringly) but overall it was productive if not for the participants, for citizens.

How many times we have to start over? Say, after one year, the republicans come up with a duplicate copy of the Boehner’s bill, and say all have to vote for that. May be all republicans will vote, but it won’t get any democratic support. You will have to start all over again. The strategic mistake Obama made was to encourage Pelosi and Reid to include the republican ideas in their bills without making any fuss. Had he bargained with the repubs for their votes for incorporation of each one of their ideas, things could have possibly been different. Again, the points that Boehner et al. are making are mostly not on the policy, but about the polls. Naturally, based on the misinformation such as death panels, most people may object to the bills, but that does not say anything about the merit of the policy. For example, most Americans influenced by the wrong information consider even scientifically established theories like the theory of evolution to be wrong. So, the popularity of a policy does not speak anything about its merit. Iraq policy was popular when the misinformation campaign was strong, and it is no more. I believe that the democrats should proceed with the bill, and the popular opinion will turn around once they see the facts.

Another point, sparked by this passage from Kate’s post: “I can’t recall House Minority Leader John Boehner or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offering a single serious, detailed idea.” Reid and Pelosi weren’t any better. The leadership vacuum on the Hill is pretty apparent and appalling.

One guy I actually sort of admire is Coburn. I don’t agree with him on almost anything but he seems to be remarkably consistent in his views and has a voting record to match them. At the very least, you know where he stands and how he’ll vote.

Rep. Ryan, for example, is supposed to be a rising star for the GOP because of his expertise in fiscal conservatism, but he voted for the Medicare prescription drug plan. Doesn’t get much more hypocritical than that.

“All I know is that, if we were debating the prospect of passing child labor laws…”
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But we’re not. To further torture analogy, this is not an argument over legislation to regulate the abuse of animals it’s legislation mandating access to veterinary care for all animals, which is a completely different animal.

vg,
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I think that’s what a lot of us here are afraid of… that they’ll just pass “something”, slap a “Reform” label on it, wipe off the sweat and say that they’re glad THAT’s over…

Kate – I would be interested in your take on this health care summit from the perspective of televising the whole thing. How would the “discussion” have played out differently if it had been conducted away from the cameras?

To 19th century industry (here, not in Bangladesh), child labor wasn’t “abuse” it was a method of producing cheaper product, the lower costs of which were then passed on to consumers.
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Health insurers, i.e. industry, now finds denial of care to be similar methods of keeping prices lower for the consumer. Pre-existing conditions exclusion is one of those methods to which industry has consented to regulation, in exchange for retaining the rest of the current myriad of care-denial procedures.
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If this were real reform, something along the lines of Medicare-for-all or a utility regulatory framework (“people can’t ever be allowed to go without heat in the winter”), then care denial wouldn’t be left in place.
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I don’t think that the analogy is too bad, actually.

My guess is that it would have been less civil and less productive, because as I said before, the biggest benefit was the citizen informacial aspect.

“I don’t think that the analogy is too bad, actually.”
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I noticed, that’s why I thought I should say something. I find it problematic to compare policies designed to protect a group (it’s not the 19th Century anymore) to ones designed provide access to an essential service. In the former, anything that fails to achieve the policy goals enables harm to continue being done by one group to another. Failing to adequately provide a new benefit is something else entirely, at least from a moral imperative standpoint.

But shepherdwong, the point of this wasn’t to provide a new benefit to those who didn’t have it (thus bringing coverage to “everyone”), it was to regulate industry such that bad industry practices (that caused suffering and literally death) ceased.
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Since care denial is being left intact as the primary means of cost control, and it is being left in the hands of those for whom the profit motive is the paramount rationale for cost control, we’re ceasing some bad industry practices, and leaving other industry practices in place, albeit for a larger population of (mandatory) consumers.
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There isn’t really a new benefit. If it was, we would be seeing an expansion of Medicare (not just the limited expansion of Medicaid).
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It’s regulation.

President Obama invited Sen. Snowe. She turned him down — as far as I understood it — because Mitch McConnell didn’t want her there.

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

C’mon, Stuart, we aren’t spending a trillion dollars to “regulate industry”. You know that bringing 30-40 million new people into the system, for good or ill, is part of the plan and part of the point. Don’t be disingenuous.

shepherdwong:
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I could say that the phrase “bringing 30-40 million new people into the system” is disingenuous, if I thought you weren’t being honest about it.

Don’t tell me that that calling regulations that compel insurers to come up with new methods of care denial than the pre-existing condition clause, and compel people to purchase insurance “regulation” is disingenuous.
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I think that some people who characterize this legislation as “covering everybody” are being pretty disingenuous.
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The bottom line is that this isn’t a benefit, not in any real sense of the word. It’s a regulatory regime applied to current industry.
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That regulatory regime condones (some might say encourages) the insurers’ denial of care as a means of containing costs. That regime “enables harm to continue being done by one group to another,” if we consider one group to be industry and another to be patients.
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I genuinely don’t see this as Medicare, or even Medicare Part D (as much of an abortion as that is).
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Do you?

1) I think it’s disingenuous because you’re sure that the whole “regulatory” scheme is to mandate new profits for industry – which I don’t deny – but that means you don’t believe that the purpose is essentially regulatory. The regulations are actually packaging to sell the tax transfer to industry for delivering an ever-crappier and out-of-reach product. That’s what you believe, isn’t it stuartzechman?
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2) Why aren’t regulations “benefits”?

“Therefore, freep, the Democrats are very aware of what has to be sacrificed to achieve their goal”

10 years of taxes and 6 years of spending – the accounting would make MAdoff blush.

The $500 billion Medicare fix may appear in the bill (as simialr ones hae in previosu years) but ZERO of them have been enacted.

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If they don’t will you write the check to balanc ethe budget?

There will not be a compromise and never will be between the parties until the politicians stop playing to the extreme ends of the base. Especially the republicans.
They will not work with Obama, for the good of the country or to save the country as long as the extremist teabaggers are screeching for them not to.
The republicans are too scared and know they will be primaried if they even think of working with Obama, even if the country is sinking (well, yeah, it already is). The teabaggers would rather see the country destroyed then to give an inch in their quest for purity and threatening the politicians.
The country is not what the teabaggers put first but, their own tantrums and snits over losing the 08 election and they will not allow any politician in the gop to do anything of substance.
It’s all rhetoric for them and they see substance as being elitist.

“And Kate, remember, Obama conceded that HCR violated two core promises”
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ummm.. How come none of your repug leaders brought that one up during the summit? Did you expect Obama to bring it up and do the dirty work for your lazy repug leaders? Maybe they lost it in the middle of all the stupid talking points about govt takeover of HC?
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BTW, the one of the best moment was when Obama responded to McCain saying he had a “legitimate” point about Florida carve out. McCain appeared to be geniunely shocked.. He just didnt expect anyone, least of all, the president to take him seriously.

Y’know, when I said “Rep Ryan’s point aside”, I meant “aside from the 6 year/10 year concern”. But whatever. As near as I can tell, this is a relatively new complaint and it is quite possible that this fact was missed by the Democrats in their haste to trumpet the CBO report. Truthfully, I’m more shocked that the CBO didn’t flag that issue as a caveat of its report. It is not an indicator that the Democrats are unwilling to make the hard decisions – they put considerable effort into making sure their bill was deficit neutral. The CBO declared it so. Now they’ve got new information that raises the question on that, but that doesn’t change the fact that they put the effort in to try and make it deficit neutral.
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And obviously something wouldn’t be enacted before it’s already been passed. Expecting anything else would be foolish at best.
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As for taxes….well, I’m Canadian so I actually can’t foot the bill but I’ll have you know that I’m of the opinion that my own government – both Federal and (absolutely) Provincial – should raise taxes. My provincial taxes actually drive me up the wall that they’re so low.

All debates are good, and its great that it was televised. In the end if they “ram” it through congress, it will work out. No legislation is without growing pains, including medicare, social security, the freeing of slaves, the formation of unions… its all slow progress in this country

If it passes, people will still get to keep their great medical care – if they have it. You need a license to drive, and thats mandated. If everyone is in the system, we won’t have to bail out the debt from the millions that we are forced to bail out. The idea is to balance the system.

We will always always have great medical care in america. Its a great country, prone to innovation, free enterprise, and constant slow slow change. We are slow to change. But we do. And we will.

I suppose it would be asking too much for you to put some actual facts and figures on the table, Stuart, rather than lofty generalities that say precisely nothing, other than “Stuart doesn’t like the bill”? Frankly, if I were you, I’d worry that only Freepie agrees with you, and Freepie took leave of reality many moons ago.