Obama gives health care another shot with summit

The President: Lets look at the things we all agree on and find some common ground.

Republicans: Democrats' ideas suck... scrap them.

Democrats: We agree on X, Y and Z.

Republicans: All democratic ideas suck... lets start over.

I listened to hours and hours of C-SPAN today and this is what I heard... mixed with several sad stories about someone who is near death and broke because they can't afford health care.

First, Americans are tired about politicians talking about their sad stories instead of doing something about them.

Second, if Republicans deny everything (including Republican ideas) because they are supported by Democrats, we will get nowhere. Of course, this is what they've been doing for over a year. My solution... vote them out of office so we can pass constructive legislation in this country.

What I see is only a few GOP Members nervous about losing their clout from certain insurance companies that have them on their payroll...They should stand behind the president and let him do his job for the wellness of the country...get off his back just because America is use to only having a white president for all these years...( Take a Quaalude, People and relax)

I love Obama, but what irks me is when he repeats the rights talking point that, "America has the best healthcare system". I heard him say it twice. I know he is trying to strike that nationalist sentiment, but it is a bad move. The democrats pulled that pussyfooted approach after 911 and we got stuck with the patriot act. At times Obama is straight and says that every other developed nation is able to provide basic healthcare for all their citizens. This would seem to contradict that earlier manipulative and moronic talking point.

That CHICKEN won't fly Mr.Prez., you might as well throw it in the deep fryer......

Judging by which responses are upped and which have been downed, there are a lot of unconditional Obama lovers at Current

It's pretty obvious that the republicans have taken so much money from the lobbyists that they will never support anything other than the broken system currently in place. The public option would only offer a solution for those who genuinely need it. The republicans have become sadists - American people need and deserve healthcare and all they care about is making sure the black guy doesn't make progress. This is mental illness, I just can't understand how they can be so cruel and still maintain support.

Money aside this will bite everyone in the ass, all each party wants to do is be right, fuck that, get real, its all about money, let's put the shit aside and make health care universal , its something that everyone needs ,

The republicans only agenda is to make sure Obama fails. Ridiculous.

A curse on both their houses.

Policy is never made in front of the cameras, its made behind closed doors. Putting cameras in front of politicians going over policy decisions is never a good idea because it directly puts them out there for the audience to critique right away. Politicians don't have the time to deliberate and estimate public reaction. Also, arguments turn into rhetoric as both sides will just spew out empty one-liners to appease the general public, essentially dumbing down the debate into layman's terms.

Most importantly though, people tend to be different people with a camera lens on them with millions of people watching. That's why you see a whole lot contradictory statements made by senators and so forth.

Maybe, less cameras the next time around Mr. O.

too much money from lobbyist to change anything w/o a fight. we "the people" don't make 'em rich. so we are not the number one factor in things changing. money makes the wheels go round.

well, just another example of Obama making the Republicans look like the idiots they are. Their favorite phrases were "start over", "scrap it" and "step by step" and yet, that is what the Dems have been trying to do with them all this time.

As Mister Gibbs said in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean "Aye, leverage says you, I think I feel a change in the wind says I"

After showing all the efforts Obama put into bending over backwards to work out solutions with both parties this will give him a lot more support for going ahead with getting legislation passed.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/25/for-democrats-the-time-fo_n_477448.html

"So at the summit itself, the prospect of reconciliation often took center stage, with a host of GOP lawmakers declaring it a massive assault on the U.S. Constitution, and Democrats responding by pointing to its frequent past use.

The differences between the two political parties -- as even Obama finally admitted -- simply are too vast for the Democrats to pass reform any other way. In his most explicit endorsement of the reconciliation process yet.

Obama responded to a question from former presidential campaign rival Sen. John McCain by saying: "I think the American people aren't always all that interested in procedures inside the Senate. I do think that they want a vote on how we're going to move this forward, and I think that most Americans think that a majority vote makes sense."

So as part of that strategy the summit was a great success

i have no idea why... but today... i watch about 7 hours of this... just... on... all... day... lol felt like all day...

Give us medicare for all or a robust public option or the ability for everyone in the country to buy into the government program.

How many fucking summits is this guy going to have? They accomplish nothing.
Someone, give me an Obama summit that was successful. It's like he keeps letting us know he's working. And that's great, if what he works on actually goes somewhere!

No matter is said at the summit it does give Obama some leverage by showing he kept his promise of televising negotiations on Health Care Reform. That alone retores some much needed credibility.

By going through all the concerns, proposals and strategies with both parties it shows that Obama has given Repulicans every opportunity to help solve the crisis. If they still refuse to help fix it and try to kill the legislation then Obama can just go ahead without them.

That's "the trap" of the political circus since it will give open and transparent evidence of all the distractions, evasions and distortions used to delay or defeat the legislation.

That way it can be used to resolve the differences and get something meaningul passed since more efficient methods can be proven to work better than the ones discussed at the summit.

For example the "public option" could get a lot more support becaue it would be more effective and less costly than those "pools' and "buy-ins" being discussed so evidence could be gathered for that without the distortions of "socialism" that has been holding it up.

That would give a lot more leverage to get a stronger bill passed than what has been happening in the last year. Even if reconcilliation has to be used there would be greatersupport for it after it haseen shown that every effort was made work together.

http://factcheck.org/2010/02/still-on-the-table/

That page shows the facts and compares al the current bills so that the merits of each can be seen and the best methods can worked out since Obama was clearly open to more ideas being included and changes made.

One of the most brilliant exchanges took place between a Republican (I forget his name) who insisted that everyone already loves their insurance and that we should just use Health Savings Account. Obama pointed out that such options (HSA’s) are worthless to someone making only $40,000 a year. This Republican than ranted and raved that we have the best healthcare in the world because the Prime Minister of Canada once came here for heart surgery – Obama quickly pointed out that 99 percent of Americans are not Sultans nor Prime Ministers and do not have the option of simply going to the Mayo Clinic or John Hopkins and writing a check for $100,000 to get the “best healthcare in the world.”

This Summit is a brilliant idea.

Again and again Republicans are trotting out their talking points and presenting their “ideas” which basically boil down to doing nothing and hoping the system just “corrects itself” at some point in the future – and every time the Dems have to basically sit down and EDUCATE these poor people on economic realities and basic math.

No, I don’t believe that the current bill is a cure-all nor is it the best solution, but throughout this Summit we at least see the reasoning of the Dems and Obama.

Another great exchange took place when one of the Repubs insisted that all we needed to do was fix medical malpractice lawsuits – Obama then patiently pointed out that the CBO already determined that reform medical malpractice (just putting caps on payouts – otherwise known as “government mandated rationing of jury awards”) would only lower costs by less than ONE PERCENT! Obama acknowledged that it would be helpful, but ONE PERCENT doesn’t really solve the problem or even put a dent in it.

So basically it was six hours of the Republicans whining, “Why don’t you just…” and then spitting out a really simple “solution” and Obama spending 15mins trying to explain to them why they already thought of that, tried that and/or determined that, no, it doesn’t work which is why they came up with the plan

I found the whole thing absolutely fascinating.

Again, I think this whole exchange pretty much killed the Tea Party. The entire (eye roll) movement was based around the idea that Obama was the most evil tyrant in all of human history and was determined to kill us all…but this pretty much showed that he was just an ordinary man who had given a lot of thought to some very, very complex issues and who was for all intents and listening to ideas and actually agreeing with Republicans on a lot of issues.

Not sure how the red-faced hysterical Tea Baggers can still maintain their fury (the only thing keeping the group unified) in the face of such…normalcy.

Hooray for political Circus.

Puppets have no real power.
Maybe everyone should just stop paying their insurance bills and see what that does.
Reforming the pharmaceutical and Food industry would do wonders for health care costs... and health in general. But big pharma already cut their deal behind closed doors. And the USDA is a joke.

Surley they can comprimise,it happens everyday in the real world.We have hope!

Some people are automatically dismissing this as "news" but having actually LISTENED to the Summit I believe that it is critical.

We get to hear first hand Obama directly discuss issues with Republicans and Democrats. Far from being the most evil tyrant on earth (as depicted by the Republicans every single day) we see a very reasoned and pragmatic President.

We also get to see how the Republicans actually think. They get to bitch directly to the President about their "concerns" and the President -- in real time -- is able to respond directly to that Senator. It's a real life exchange.

For example: did you people hear the exchange between Obama and McCain? If you automatically dismissed this event and didn't bother to even watch then you missed a real leadership moment. McCain spent 10mins complaining that Obama didn't televise the healthcare debates 6 months ago and basically didn't say a single substanstive thing about healthcare reform. Obama then told John point blank, "The elections are over. You can stop campaigning now."

Little Johnny got his ass spanked on national TV. It was beautiful.

Obama then went on to explain, "I want this Summit to be about SPECIFIC issues with the healthcare bill...not just political gimmicks and speech making."

When pressed to come up with SPECIFIC objections to SPECIFIC items most Republicans didn't have shit to say and Obama repeatedly spanked their asses.

Basically this whole thing was important because it allowed Obama to EXPLAIN specific rationals for why XYZ or ABC was put into the healthcare bill and what the thinking was. It also will demonstrat to the retarded Tea Baggers that Obama in not 100x worse than Hitler, but actually a really intelligent and thoughtful President that is trying to solve a deeply complex problem....not a tyrant bent on rounding us all up and putting us into prison camps.

The bottom line is the Republicans come off looking very petty and deeply uneducated about economic both micro and macro....and Obama looks incredibly intelligent.

No wonder the Repubs were terrified of debating with the President on live TV.

if the Repubs ever get away from they're talking points....it's obvious they don't know what they hell they are talking about! John McCain is a good example. They man knows NOTHING and yet he is able to hide behind his 5 preprogrammed talking point responses to hide that fact. In a live exchange between himself and someone much, much more intelligent...he looks like an idiot.

Why can't they pass individual bills for the things the agree on? why do they have to jerk each other off until they come up with a all inclusive bill?

Another political show for the masses. Pass a bill that actually addresses health and not perks to campaign donors and that might be something worth mentioning.

And I wonder how expensive (taxpayer's expense mind you) their name cards costs for this over-hyped empty gesture.

I hate that stories like this are automatically shot to the top of the front page just because CNN, NBC, or FoxNews thinks it's 'headline' news. When really it's not. It means nothing, just like all the other healthcare debates and summits and dicksucking 'national conversations'. If they PASSED something it MIGHT, I repeat, MIGHT be news. But until then don't mistake their empty gesture for actual actions or real news.