Paul Krugman heaves a weary sigh.
If we’re lucky, Thursday’s summit will turn out to have been the last act in the great health reform debate, the prologue to passage of an imperfect but nonetheless history-making bill. If so, the debate will have ended as it began: with Democrats offering moderate plans that draw heavily on past Republican ideas, and Republicans responding with slander and misdirection.
Nobody really expected anything different. But what was nonetheless revealing about the meeting was the fact that Republicans — who had weeks to prepare for this particular event, and have been campaigning against reform for a year — didn’t bother making a case that could withstand even minimal fact-checking.
Republicans didn't have a plan. What their input to the House plan showed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, was that “the pool of people without health insurance would end up being less healthy, on average, than under current law.” The bottom line is that, for all their yak, the Republicans added nothing to either process or policy.
At this point they obviously believe that they can blandly make utterly misleading assertions, saying things that can be easily refuted, and pay no price. And they may well be right.But Democrats can have the last laugh. All they have to do — and they have the power to do it — is finish the job, and enact health reform.
David Brooks is lost in admiration for the president. He's had a little crush on Obama for a long time.
The man really knows how to lead a discussion. He stuck to specifics and tried to rein in people who were flying off into generalities. He picked out the core point in any comment. He tried to keep things going in a coherent direction.Moreover, he seemed to be trying to get a result. Republicans had their substantive criticism of the Democratic bills, but Obama kept pressing them for areas of agreement.
Brooks also noticed something else, something that many of us have been watching lately: how much better informed and articulate members of Congress are than their leaders. Before we jump all over them, though, it's important to note that we're talking about the top leadership working more frantically for longer and with greater sense of urgency thanmost members of their caucuses.
For the rest, he goes all starry-eyed about Republican contributions to the discussion, though it's true Tom Coburn was interesting and straightforward.
In the end, Brooks thinks the result will be inconclusive.
There were times on Thursday when compromise seemed hopeless. But there were other times, when participants started talking nuts and bolts of the exchanges, when there was overlap: how to create interstate insurance markets without a race to the bottom; how to end insurance company power over those with pre-existing conditions.
Health care reform probably will not get passed this year. But there were moments, at the most wonky and specific, when the two sides echoed each other. Glimmers of hope for the next set of reformers.
EJ Dionne focused on four episodes during the debate -- "four revealing moments."
An early exchange between Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Obama highlighted the foolishness of talking about the number of pages in the bill.
Vice President Joe Biden argued that the debate over the White House’s health-care proposal was “a philosophical echo of the debate on Social Security.” That’s exactly right and important: Opponents of social security said provision for retirement was something best left to individuals and the private sector. ... Many who oppose a government guarantee that everyone will have health coverage -- and that is where the Obama proposal will eventually lead -- fear the same result: once it’s passed, this program will be too popular to repeal.
Late in the day, Obama admitted that he has reversed his position on the mandate requiring that everyone buy health insurance. ... A suggestion to the president: Tonight, please call Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and apologize for all the bad things you said about her mandate proposal during the campaign. She was right about this issue. You should tell her so.
And good for Obama for asking Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) if he would really rather have catastrophic care than comprehensive health coverage. Barrasso said it would lead him to be a better health-care consumer, which makes you wonder whether Barrasso will agree to dump what he now has. But Obama then made the central point of the whole day. Speaking of the uninsured, he said: “We can debate whether we can afford to help them. We can’t say they don’t need help.”
Looking forward. Dick Durbin makes the key point, one that only the economists and the uninsured really understand: neither the economy nor those without health care will survive for long without reform. Comfortable Americans don't like being told that the status quo is "unsustainable."
During a break in the session, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) deemed a bipartisan deal "a long-shot" prospect, but he told reporters that Democrats are undaunted in their quest to deliver a bill to Obama's desk.
"If nothing comes of this, we're going to press forward," he said. "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."
The New York Times editorial goes straight to the point. The jingoist claims that "we have the best healthcare system in the world" coming from Boehner and other Republicans just aren't true. The sooner we actually start working towards a "best" healthcare system, the better.
Here is a basic fact: If the House Democrats voted tomorrow to approve the Senate bill, health care reform would become the law of the land.
The president and Speaker Nancy Pelosi should push the House to accept the fundamentally sound Senate bill. If they still cannot garner enough votes from their own caucus, they should alter the Senate bill slightly with parallel legislation that could be passed with budget reconciliation.
Mr. Obama needs to keep explaining to Americans that this health care reform is critical — to give them security, to hold down costs and ease the strain on federal budgets. His main challenge, and his best chance, for passing it is to get his own party in line.
Other interesting views of yesterday's "summit" can be found here, and here, and here.
