Thursday's televised Health Care Summit meeting was:
(a.) A noble attempt to find bipartisanship
(b.) A scripted political dog-and-pony show
(c.) A waste of time
(d.) All of the above
The correct answer, of course, is (d.). The whole idea was a long shot to begin with. Before the meeting even began, Republicans tipped their hand by being overly concerned about the seating arrangements and the shape of the table. After the President's opening remarks, the first speaker was Sen. Lamar Alexander (R), who immediately announced that his party's big plan for working together on health care was to toss out a year's work, start all over again, and this time do everything that the Republicans and insurance companies want. Now that's bipartisanship! If you looked close, you could see the thought balloon over Obama's head -- "Well, shit! Here goes 6 hours of my life that I'll never get back again!"
It remains clear that the D's will have to do this themselves via the 51-vote reconciliation route. Buster hopes they have the guts to do it, 'cause it needs to get done. Our health care status quo is disgraceful and getting more so by the minute.
In a related note, deep thinker Ben Stein told us that the main reason Republicans are opposed to health care reform is because reform means "Republicans will pay for health care and Democrats will use it." In The-World-According-To-Ben, it seems Republicans are uniformly responsible, wealthy and healthy while Democrats are shiftless, poor and disease-ridden. Sure, Ben. Now please shut the fuck up.
(By the way, Ben's credentials for such insightful commentary are an economics degree and a couple years as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon. Wow. Tricky Dick's mouthpiece. What an unimpeachable source. Ha!)
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