Voting Resources
Obama's Bipartisan Health Care Summit: Impartial Moderation? No Doctors?
Obama has called for a bipartisan health care summit to be held this Thursday, February 25th, and says he will take the role of the "impartial moderator." In order to avoid the need for 60 votes in the Senate, Obama is backing reconciliation, a process that only requires 51 votes. According to writer Al Campbell, the reconciliation process is intended for budget matters, and is not supposed to be used for such legislation as health care reform. Below is what CPAC 2010 attendees have to say about Obamas bipartisan health care summit:
According to the invitation, President Obama will deliver some opening remarks at the event and then open and moderate discussion on four topics: insurance reforms, cost containment, expanding coverage and the impact health reform legislation will have on deficit reduction. Obama is inviting the most senior House and Senate bipartisan leaders to the health care summit, and althought there are 19 doctors in the House of Representatives, he is not inviting any of them. Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA), the co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, weighs in on this issue:
Comments
Preconditions
John McCain echoed a mantra throughout the Presidential primaries--“Don’t meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Fidel Castro without preconditions”. I recommend the Republican Party take this advice and refuse to meet with President Obama without first demanding a precondition.
The main stipulation would be an agreement to begin Health Care discussions from scratch—discarding existing Health Care bills, including the recently introduced Presidential bill. It seems a little odd that the “mediator” (Obama) would present his own bill just days before the meeting?
Televised discussions can be risky for both the Democrats and the Republicans. Either party has the potential to lose, but I believe the biggest loser will be Barack Hussein Obama. In fact, I believe he’ll lose either way. If the Democrats get what they really want, the public will be outraged. Should the Republicans be victorious, Obama will appear powerless and ineffective.
If the Republicans accept the existing bills as a starting point, they’ve already conceded too much. Without demanding preconditions prior to discussions, the Republicans could be walking into the Democrat’s snare.
Minimum standards for negotiation
universal/coverage/insurance plan.
We should begin now to withhold all approval of the current "reform" until at least the following were met:
1. there is true tort reform (and Protect those of us whose states have already passed tort reform,
2. a promise to get rid of the yearly, now biannual, threats of payment cuts, and
3. remove all the stumbling blocks of HIPAA and this year's latest amendment to that Act.
4. The government should stop trying to make physicians the de facto insurers and bureaucratic partners in limiting care, as in the Accountability groups.
5. Get rid of the requirement for a midlevel at the Rural Health and Federally Qualified Health Centers.