Well, the much bally-hooed Kabuki Health Summit is over. I watched a little bit of it because with the Mainstream Conservative Corporate Media (M2CM) actually calling it "political theater" outright and them being wrong about almost everything, I kinda sorta thought there might really be something to it. I was wrong and for once the M2CM was right.
There was nothing to it but the Democrats' attempt to show the country that the Pubs are obstructionist assholes, which the GOP members attending promptly did their best to prove, bragging about what heroes they are for not letting Obama's socialist nightmare become law. ("Socialist nightmare" is now officially defined as anything govt does to interfere with corporate commission of blackmail, bribery, or looting of public and private money that does not currently already belong to them using any trick, deceit, lie, or unethical/illegal practice that may occur to them, and/or to any govt policy that might tend to reverse the upward flow of wealth and send it sliding back down the pyramid to the mob/hoi-polloi/pee-ons/rabble [that's us they're talking about, Slim] at the bottom of the food chain.)
Of course, the mere fact that nothing whatever of news value came from this exercise didn't stop the M2CM from pretending that something of significance went on. David Herzenhorn at the NYT, in a desperate attempt to come up with something worth reporting, decided that the summit proved that reconciliation was the only Dem option.
Their most viable path seemed to be an effort to attach revisions to the health care bill to a budget reconciliation measure, which the Senate could adopt by a simple majority. "If nothing comes of this we're going to press forward," said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. "We just can't quit. This is a once-in-a-political-lifetime opportunity to deal with a health care system that is really unsustainable."
No, it's not. You'd be surprised. Any time anybody wants to propose a public option or national health along the lines of "Medicare for everybody", it will easily raise both it and him/her to hero status and extend their political life unto the 3rd and 4th generation. Not that the conservaDems running the party want you to believe that, no matter what the polls say.
For the WaPo's Ezra Klein (my, how the mighty have fallen), the story is that Obama and his Admin are "digging in".
The big story out of the summit is not that Republicans and Democrats extended their hands in friendship, but that the White House has dug its heels into the dirt. The Democrats are not taking reconciliation off the table, they are not paring back the bill, and they are not extricating themselves from the issue. They think they're right on this one, and they're going to try and pass this legislation.
Stop the presses! I had no idea the Dems would refuse to back down on passing a bill as friendly to health insurance companies as this one just because the Pubs want one even friendlier - and might get it. Nor was I aware (who could have guessed?) that the GOP would be so stubborn and obstructionist even with a bill in which Obama and the Senate Blue Dog conservatives had given them practically everything they wanted. That came as a real shock.
But Klein appears to be correct: Obama is so determined to pass this bill that he's prepared to make even more concessions to the GOP/conservaDems.
They could potentially devise further changes to the bill, adding Republican ideas even without Republican cooperation. One area of common ground to emerge at the forum was an idea put forward by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, to use undercover regulators posing as patients to root out fraud by doctors and hospitals. "That's something that I'd be very interested in exploring," Mr. Obama said. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, called it "a great idea."
Sure it is. At least in Sen Tom "Lesbians in the School Lavatory" Coburn's diseased alternate universe, where hospitals are filled with doctors and nurses continually stealing thrifty, unsuspecting, innocent investors' profits with scams and sky-high union wages, just as he imagined Oklahoma's school restrooms were full of dastardly lesbians preying on innocent virgins. (Why is it that wingnut fears always seem to circle around the kind of sex they jerk off to?)
Naturally, I want my govt listening seriously to any suggestion that comes from a mind that sick. And let's explore that lesbian deal while we're at it. And the concentration camps where Obama is sending all his opponents (except the ones that he invites to attack him in seminars and summits) and the Commies who have infiltrated every school board outside Texas & Oklahoma and the big-boobed Amazon Women on Mars that Tom dreams about whenever he isn't dreaming about lesbians getting off in the school bathroom.
I suspect that the HuffPost's Sam Stein is the only one who really pegged the Truly Big Story.
Seven hours of sometimes combative, often wonky health care conversation left President Obama and other Democratic leaders with no more Republican support for health reform than they started with. But it did produce one thing: A consensus that there really isn't any point in talking anymore.
That sounds about right. I mean, you know...
The most memorable portions of Thursday's summit involved sparks flying between the president and his Republican critics over health care reform issues both substantive and superficial.
No matter how many times Obama pointed out that there are significant areas of overlap between his plan and the Republican Party's proposals, his opponents continued to express strong disagreement over such things as the government's role in expanding coverage (Obama's plan would cover 30 million uninsured, the Republicans would cover three million) or the design of insurance market reforms (Obama would prohibit discrimination against pre-existing conditions, Republicans would not), or the length of the bill.
Democrats forcefully resisted the Republican's main proposal -- which was to start over from scratch.
And so on.
Anyway, screw all that boring, unsexy policy shit. Healthcare. Who cares? We want to talk about something important and meaningful in our lives that everyone can relate to.
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