Obama told CBS News’ anchor Katie Couric in an interview taped before the Super Bowl that “I want to ask them [the Republicans] to put their ideas on the table, and then after the [congressional] recess, which will be a few weeks away, I want to come back and have a large meeting, the Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward.”
The Washington Post reported that Obama had invited Republicans to take part in a half-day summit that would be televised live later this month, just as his meeting last week with House Republicans at their Baltimore retreat was open to cameras.
Obama’s offer reflected both the political reality that health care reform is in jeopardy after the loss of the Democrats’ 60-vote majority in the Senate, which allowed them to shut down filibusters. It also reflected Obama’s sensitivity to the criticism that the shaping of the legislation had not met his promise of transparency, something that he acknowledged at the Republican retreat.
DO NOT FALL FOR IT REPUBLICANS! Summits don’t work. Nor do committees. Summits, committees, panels, pick a name, they serve as nothing but a forum to point fingers, spread blame, and escape responsibility. How many times have we heard as a response to an attack on a political position that “so and so on the panel agrees with me.” Too many. Obama is the president, he’s responsible. Make him so. Let him fail on his own rather than joining him in his failure. I’ve read the bills, they are both a disaster for our nation, for our liberty. They both fail the fundamental American constitutional test, so again, don’t join him in his attack on our liberty.
So do not attend his summit. He will use the attendance to accomplish one of two things. He will either use it to claim he has bi-partisan support or use it to attack Republicans as the “say no” guys.
Obama will not use the summit to accomplish anything other than putting Republicans in a bad light. He will use it to shift the middle ground to the “left.” Don’t fall for it. Don’t go. This guy isn’t into compromise and neither are most Americans. We want our freedom. We demand it. His beliefs are different than ours. Don’t let us down by reaching across the aisle. Reach for American Principles of which both the pending House and Senate bills are vacant. But don’t be uninvolved. Here’s what you should do:
Draft a comprehensive health care proposal that does the following:
1. Allows inter-state competition.
2. Makes health insurance policies portable.
3. Provide tax benefits that subsidize the cost of insurance companies providing coverage for pre-existing conditions.
4. Propose tort reform.
5. Expand medical health care savings accounts. Allow folks to get more than a dollar for dollar tax break on money they put into their medical savings account.
6. Provide liability protection for nurses and physicians’ assistants so that they can increase the supply of medical services without the need for a supervising medical doctor. Increased supply over demand drives prices down. You’ll have to use simple words when explaining this principle to the Obamanomics followers.
7. Provide tax incentives for attending medical schools for doctors and nurses.
8. Provide tax incentives through medical savings accounts that will allow the eventual discontinuance of entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. We can’t afford them, period. They will end one way or the other. Take some responsibility and wean America from them rather than collapsing America with them.
9. Propose that all government workers, including congress, will be placed in the same circumstances as all other Americans.
10. Do the numbers. Provide hard accounting of the facts of your proposal. Have specific numbers based on reality and not fantasy as to how much it will eliminate government bureaucracy and governments costs.
And send it in a memo to Obama. Come on guys, aren’t you a bit embarrassed to be participating in an Obama Summit? You should be so don’t participate, just send a memo. He can send one back so you have his response in writing. Although, he might just send over his teleprompter. What’s the difference?
That’s my Reetzality for the Day.
Thanks for the read.
Brett Reetz