Posted on 02/10/2010 4:35:17 AM PST by maggief
EXCERPT
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. All right, now, back to the health care bill. February 25th -- do you intend to go to this bipartisan meeting that the president is calling and is going to have televised at the White House?
BOEHNER: Well, listen, I want to have a bipartisan conversation with the president about how to fix our health care system. But Eric Cantor and I sent a letter to Rahm Emanuel posing a series of questions about, really, what is this? You know, the White House let us know about an hour before the American people saw this in his interview on Sunday afternoon.
VAN SUSTEREN: So it's a stunt?
BOEHNER: Well, I don't know. That's what we're trying to get to the bottom of.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. What would it take for to you go to that February 25th...
BOEHNER: Listen, I want to have this bipartisan conversation, but I want it to be productive and I want it to be real. I don't want to walk into some trap. I don't want to walk into some political event. I want to walk in and have a real conversation about what we can do to make our current system work better.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Then either pass it (if you can) and own it, or back off and accomplish your goals in a way that won't destroy the very people you propose to help.
Yes, the response should be that the GOP leaders will meet with the President only on the grounds that the old health care bill is killed and the point of the meeting is to discuss crafting a completely new bill or start with one of the numerous Republican alternative bills out there. Without those guarantees, the GOP should not meet with the President.
0bama has no intention of starting over. The unions own him.
I agree, except about the unions. The private sector unions are only a funding source for liberals and will be eliminated once their funds are no longer needed.
You see, liberals hate manufacturing....it is dirty and anti-environment to them.
Stern and the SEIU?
How many times has he visited the WH?
Related:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2448220/posts
GOP Needs to Make Case at Health Care Summit
Townhall.com ^ | February 10, 2010 | Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
President Obama has so lowered expectations for the Republican Party that if they come to the health care summit he has called at the White House with concrete and well articulated proposals, it will blow the country away. Repeatedly, the president has fashioned the GOP as the party of “no,” goading them by saying, “If you have any ideas, bring them on.”
Well, let them do it.
Republicans need to be on their toes and aggressive in the meeting, and not let it devolve into a question and answer session with the president hogging the mike. He asked for a meeting, not a lecture or a media conference, and Republicans need to demand equal time to present their ideas.
Start with tort reform. The Republicans need to explain how much of the unnecessary medical costs are being driven by useless tort litigation. In Mississippi, where they acted to preclude much of it, malpractice premiums have declined by 50 percent.
The GOP needs to explain to the nation that when the president says he is going to cut costs by eliminating tests that aren’t necessary, he is catching doctors in a vice. On the one side, they have the government prohibiting or discouraging them from tests, and on the other, the trial lawyer bar waiting to pounce on them for failing to administer the proper tests if their care has a bad outcome.
The Republicans need to make the cost-cutting part of the health care summit about tort reform, constantly raising the subject as the counter to the president’s proposed $500 billion cut in Medicare.
Then Republicans need to discuss other cost-saving measures, such as allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines and other measures to encourage competition.
Republicans should also zero in on the need for more doctors if we are to expand the number of patients covered. They must articulate the conclusion so much of the nation has come to (but official Washington has never embraced) that you cannot have more patients without more doctors unless you want to impose rationing. They should make the case that you need to phase in coverage for those who are not now covered so that you can increase the supply of doctors and nurses at the same time. Supply must keep pace with demand so that artificial scarcity does not leave the nation short of doctors.
The Republicans need to point out that in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney inflicted a version of Obamacare on the state, the waiting time to see a doctor in Boston is now 63 days. They need to stress that any rationing will be felt primarily by the elderly and will lead to premature deaths.
Finally, Republicans need to explain their own proposals for reforming health care — including Medical Savings Accounts and expansions of current tax breaks to encourage people and small businesses to purchase insurance.
Then, Republicans need to keep up a steady drumfire of criticism of the president’s proposals. They need to:
— Attack the proposed cuts in Medicare.
— Criticize the individual mandate as unconstitutional and paint a vivid picture of how much it will cost young families.
— Demand that young people be permitted to purchase catastrophic coverage to satisfy any mandate rather than full coverage they don’t need.
— Spell out, in detail, how the tax on medical devices will raise the cost of pacemakers, automated wheelchairs, arterial stints, prosthetic limbs and all manner of necessary medical equipment.
— Attack the proposal to make a taxpayer spend 10 percent of his income, as opposed to 7.5 percent at present, on medical expenses in order to deduct them. Expose this tax as a tax on the sick.
— Criticize the idea that people could be imprisoned for failing to have health insurance or to pay the fine the legislation imposes. There is a big difference between tax evasion and failing to have health insurance.
With proper preparation, the Republicans can turn this health care summit into a nationally televised town meeting such as frustrated Democratic congressmen last August.
You said it all....and very, very well. Kudos and bump.
I said private sector unions.....not public sector unions like SEIU.
Thank you. Hopefully some of the GOP leadership is reading this thread. There are some great ideas being proposed.
Thing is, you can’t rely on this meeting to be conducted in an honorable way. IF they take the meeting Paul Ryan and Tom Price should be given plenty of floor time.
Cantor last night on Greta repeated that the current proposals have been sounded rejected. ITA that that needs to be hammered home.
Maybe it would help to settle the philosophical and moral aspects of the case before moving ahead to policy. What is the cutting-edge conservative thought on this problem?
Do people have a constitutional right to health care at no cost or at all? No, that's not in the Constitution.
Do people have a moral or philosophical right to health care at no cost or at all? No, because health care is, after all, goods and services and one individual does not have the right to confiscate the productive output of another, not even if the government says so.
Does our society have a moral obligation to take care of sick people who can't afford treatment, at least to some degree? Yes, and there is ample historical and ethical and philosophical basis to support this statement. We take care of the sick and the weak. We don't drag them in to the gutter and shoot them like the Nazis did, nor leave them to die in their beds.
How then, do we, as a society, take care of those who legitimately can't take care of themselves? How do we do this without confiscating the wealth of productive citizens or squandering the money through waste, fraud and abuse and without allowing a program to grow so large that it threatens the financial viability of our entire nation? All of these things can be done, I believe, but not with the people running the show now, and not in the current political climate.
Well, I grew up with my dad saying “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight”
Boehner, arm yourself appropriately.
Thanks for posting that...it puts pres Odumbo ploy in perspective.
Barack Obama treated Republicans like dirt when they had no power. Like dirt.
Now he wants to pretend like he is interested in working with them??
Barack Obama showed his true character in the first year of his administration--for EXACTLY one year later, in Massachusetts, the people destroyed his filibuster-proof Senate.
Barack Obama's character is poor--and he is NOT to be believed.
(As an aside: George W. Bush was not like this. He brought in Democrats for advice and consultation even when his party controlled the legislature. His character was also revealed in those acts. Though I didn't always agree with Bush's decisions, his character was not in question.)
All your comments were good, but this especially is spot on.. “Every time these people open their mouths, they sound like scaredy cats and just blow it.”
What's a congress for?
“Boehner is a bonehead.”
Actually, Boehner’s letter is cleverly crafted. Obama gets zinged time and again for hypocrisy and Boehner tosses in a number of useful Republican talking points, i.e., that the administratiion’s own actuaries say the Dems plans will INCREASE health spending, that CBO says the Dems plans will INCREASE health insurance premiums for the individual market, that the more Obama talked, the less the public liked his plan etc.
Very good reply to this post. You have made some great points on how leaders should act. I fear this is all going to only humiliate us even more. The time for talk was over about 8 years ago when the enemy started on their treasonous attack against this country.
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