Summary of the Health Care Summit

You mean you didn't have 7 hours last Thursday to dedicate to watching the Health Care Summit on TV or on your office computer? Well, here is all you need to know.

It was a noble effort. Unfortunately, the wrong people were invited. The members of the House and Senate.

Here is 7 hours of Senators and Congressmen rolled into 1 line:

Start Over...here's my patient story...Socialist Takeover...The Party of No...

Some have complained that President Obama spoke for roughly one-third of the 5 hours that were in session. Thank God. Any minute given over to almost any Democratic or Republican in the room would have made my eyes flip back inside my head.

There were a few notable exceptions. On the Republican side, hats off to Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. He made cogent and meaty suggestions, if overselling the potential impact of tort reform on the total cost of Health Care. Expect to see some of the things he spoke of in the final bill put forward by President Obama. Being rational does have its benefits.

On the Democratic side, well, one member trumped pretty much everyone else in the room. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, spoke for a few minutes, but you only need to see this one minute clip to realize that almost everyone else in the room was out of their league.


With that, Senator Durbin boiled the entire health care debate down to a simple statement that wasn't even an attempt at a sound-bite (OK, well, the line about giving up your Govt Health Care if you think it is Socialist was a pretty good one). He stood out from everyone else and renewed my belief that there might indeed be intelligent life inside the Beltway.

We'll find out more tomorrow, but expect the following:

a few more snippets of Republican ideas added to the bill as well as existing Republican ideas already in the bill highlighted

The approach will be to get the House to approve the Senate bill as is and then have the changes/additions from the bill Obama presents produced as part of Reconcilliation Bill that will have just an up or down vote. No filibuster.

One final note - is it a requirement the senior leadership of both parties in the House and Senate sound and act ludicrous in the presence of everyone? I don't know who was worse. Yes I do, it was a tie. Nancy, you are a great leader of the House, which means you are totally despised by the opposition party, but when you have nothing to say, don't waste our time for 5 minutes.

John (Boehner), you remind me so much of the old Saturday Night Live skit when Steve Martin plays a contestant on the show Family Feud. He is the head of the Romaine Lettuce Growers Association of El Camino Del Rey Mar Vista California and the only answer he can think of to any question is "Romaine Lettuce".


I wonder if he ever feels awkward continuing to say we need to start over? I think even those who agree with him are tired of hearing him say it.

Now I understand how party leaders can get unseated. It seems that in order to fulfill your responsibilities in today's Congress, you have to sound like an idiot.