The following are remarks made by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, about the cost of the House and Senate health-care bills at President Obama’s Blair House summit on health care, Feb. 25.

From The National Center

President Obama’s new health care plan will all but guarantee the elimination of private insurance and lead to a single payer government-run health care system, says a new report, “White House Health Care Plan Contains Back Door to a Public Option” by policy analyst Matt Patterson of the National Center For Public Policy Research. 

Among the findings:

* The President’s plan would create a new federal agency charged with monitoring health insurers to make sure that proposed premium increases are not “unreasonable” or “unjustified.”  This agency could compel private insurers to lower premiums, offer rebates or “take other actions to make premiums affordable.”

* The President’s plan would also dictate that health insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions and saddle them with billion in new taxes and fees.

* Health insurance is one of the least profitable industries America.  In terms of profit margin, in 2009 it ranked a dismal 87th out of 215 industries; their overall profit margin was a mere 3.4 percent.

* The President’s proposed combination of new taxes and price controls would cause a wave of health insurer bankruptcies, devastating the industry and reducing health insurance options for consumers.

* Eventually, the shrinking pool of private insurers would force the government to enact a single payer system to provide the insurance that Congress mandates that all Americans have.

Patterson calls Obama’s ploy “breathtakingly audacious,” noting, “Far from being able to keep the plan you like, the President’s health care plan seems designed to make sure you end up with only one option for your health care – the government.”

“White House Health Care Plan Contains Back Door to a Public Option,” by Matt Patterson is available on the National Center For Public Policy Research website at http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA603.html.

The National Center For Public Policy Research is a conservative, Constitution-respecting, free-market non-profit think-tank established in 1982.  It is supported by the voluntary gifts of over 100,000 individual recent supporters, and receives less than one percent of its revenue from corporate sources.

From the Washington Examiner

By Brian York

From Investor’s Business Daily

Thursday’s much-hyped health “summit” seemed mainly designed to show the president telling Republicans, “Those are all legitimate points.” Democrats admit it was a setup to pass their $2 trillion plan.

Not long before the president assembled Democrats and Republicans at the Garden Room of Blair House for a health care powwow, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., let it all hang out on the House floor, roaring that “every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry.”

Civility was the cool thing during the grand gathering, but the real purpose behind this televised event was cutthroat.

A Politico story by Mike Allen made that clear, reporting that according to a Democratic official the summit was meant to “give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.”

Democratic Party strategists told the Web-based publication that the push will begin early next week for “a massive, Democrats-only health care plan.” The official said of the summit’s purpose: “The point is to alter the political atmospherics.”

Clearly, while the public face with the C-SPAN cameras on is the president’s soft-spoken “those are all reasonable points,” the unseen reality is closer to the partisan rants of Rep. Weiner.

Again and again, Democratic participants insisted that “we’re really not that far apart,” “we really are close” and “we basically agree” except for “semantic differences.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., whose trouble with numbers extends to his own tax returns and whose airtime was buried toward the end of the event, absurdly claimed that there was 70% agreement between Democrats and Republicans.

When Republicans respectfully objected, with factual backup, that the differences were actually basic, relating to government vs. individual control, they were curtly accused of rattling off political “talking points” by the president.

A perfect example of the trickery was the president’s seeming willingness to agree to let consumers buy health insurance across state lines — maybe after his national health insurance exchange is established. The continual theme: Let the federal government intrude, then we can talk.

Read the rest of the column

From Washington Times

President Obama pledged to “listen” at the outset of his much-ballyhooed bipartisan health care summit on Thursday. Turns out he meant he’d be listening to his own voice.

By the end of the televised event, Mr. Obama had spoken for 119 minutes – nine minutes more than the 110 minutes consumed by 17 Republicans. The 21 Democratic lawmakers used 114 minutes, giving the president and his supporters a whopping 233 minutes, according to a “talk clock” kept by GOP aides.

From the beginning, no one could agree on anything, even how much time each side had used. When a miffed Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, pointed out early on that Democrats had controlled 52 minutes to Republicans’ 24, Mr. Obama jumped in to dispute even that.

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” he said.

But then, with a twinkle in his eye, he added: “You’re right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements because – I’m the president.” Half the room laughed. “I didn’t count my time in terms of dividing it evenly.”

The two sides faced off in the Blair House’s Garden Room, with members of Congress, grouped by party, sitting across from one another in a large square. Throughout the six-hour bloviating blabfest, no fences appeared to be mended and no hatchets buried.

In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed so intractable that neither looked at Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as he delivered the opening statement for the Republicans. Every time the C-SPAN 3 camera panned to the pair, they were looking straight ahead, expressionless.

Throughout the event, Mr. Obama, a former professor, looked, well, professorial. He listened attentively, his head cocked, his chin raised. He narrowed his eyes in attentiveness at a point here or there, blinking often; he jotted notes in a small book as Republicans spoke; he rested his head on his hand, giving full attention to the speaker.

But each time a Republican sought to break in to rebut a point made by the president or a fellow Democrat, Mr. Obama looked a bit frustrated and made clear who was in charge of the bipartisan discussion.

“Let me just finish, Lamar,” he said during his rebuttal to the senator’s opening statement. “No, no, no, no. Let me – and this is an example of where we’ve got to get our facts straight,” he said when Mr. Alexander sought to clarify a point.

Read the rest of the column

From National Review

We have some strong disagreements on the numbers,” President Obama said after Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) concluded his devastating critique of the Democrats’ budget claims, “but I don’t want to get too bogged down.” In the ensuing debate, what became clear is that the Democrats just don’t have an answer to Ryan’s arguments. They ducked, dodged, and changed the subject repeatedly, because Ryan’s numbers themselves are unimpeachable.

The Democrats are touting an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office that their health-care bill would reduce the deficit by around $130 billion over the next ten years. What Ryan pointed out — and what no Democrat even attempted to counter — is that this is because the legislation front-loads tax hikes and Medicare cuts and defers costs, forcing the CBO to score ten years of offsets with only six years of spending. Looked at on a level playing field, the true ten-year cost of the bill is $2.3 trillion rather than $950 billion, Ryan said.

Then he brought up another gimmick: The bill is full of double-counting. “Savings” are counted as offsets for new health-care spending and at the same time set aside to pay for future entitlements. For instance, the Democrats claim $52 billion in offsets as a result of increasing Social Security payroll-tax revenues. But these dollars are already claimed for future Social Security beneficiaries. They can’t pay for both. The Democrats take another $72 billion in premiums intended to fund a new long-term-care program and count them as offsets for other spending. Ryan pointed out that Senate Budget Committee chairman Kent Conrad has called this “a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.”

Perhaps most important, Ryan confronted the Democrats with the issue of the “Doc Fix” — a separate bill that would have added $371 billion to the Democrats’ legislation if it hadn’t been stripped out. The Doc Fix would have prevented Medicare reimbursements to doctors from plummeting by 21 percent, a drop that Congress put into the bill to improve its CBO score but never planned to allow, most political observers agree.

Read the rest of the column

From the US Chamber of Commerce

As the U.S. Chamber has spelled out, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has also made clear, there are many ideas out there to get health care costs under control. As you can see in the House- and Senate-passed bills, many in Congress believe the best way to control costs is to raise taxes on health care products and insurance, slash payments to doctors and hospitals, create and expand government-run programs for health insurance and long-term care, and force individuals and businesses to purchase what they don’t want or can’t afford. At the Chamber of Commerce, we prefer proposals that will actually increase choice, competition, and consumerism.

Real choice doesn’t come from a new government program. In fact, the “public option,” which might end up as the only option, would be just one more plan, and would cost more than private insurance. Why not break down state barriers, allow consumers to choose from thousands of insurance plans, instead of forcing them to stay in consolidated markets with burdensome coverage mandates? The CBO said that this option alone would both cut health care costs by 5% and save the federal government at least $12 billion. Allowing small businesses to pool together and purchase plans outside of state bureaucrats’ control would save billions more by getting people off of Medicaid and into new, more affordable employer plans.

If we want real competition in health care, we should let people and plans see the costs and quality of providers and procedures. That’s a big project and it will take time, but it could be jump-started by releasing patient-protected CMS claims data to quality reporting organizations. Overnight, we could have massive amounts of data on thousands of hospitals and doctors, and could let people truly see the costs of care. This used to be called the “Clinton-Gregg-Obama” bill.

Once people see the real costs of health care, those costs need to matter – which means a purely third-party-payer system needs some change. For starters, we need many more high-deductible health plan (HDHP) options to give people skin in the game. People often expect their health insurance to cover everything, because it costs so much; HDHPs have lower premiums but do not immediately kick in to cover all costs. But the plans need work – the accounts they are paired with should be able to pay the plan premiums, should have much higher contribution limits (especially for those with chronic conditions or low incomes), and they need to be tweaked to work better with innovative health programs like Patient-Centered Medical Homes and accountable care organizations.

Enact these changes, and we have already cut health care costs, insured more Americans, and created real competition between health plans and providers – while helping people be better health care consumers and giving them the tools to be smart shoppers. And we saved money for the government, without taxes and without infringing on individual or employer autonomy. These few items would not be a comprehensive reform plan, but they would certainly be a good way to start – and they could all garner bipartisan support.

From the Cato Institute

By Michael Tanner 

In 301 AD, the Roman emperor Diocletian imposed price controls on most commodities and professions in the empire. The penalty for raising prices was death. Yet the controls failed utterly, leading to shortages, more inflation and the near collapse of the imperial economy.

Now, nearly two millennia later, President Obama seems determined to demonstrate how little we’ve learned.

Yesterday, the president proposed giving the federal government the power to regulate insurance premiums. Undoubtedly, this will be politically popular — at least, in the short term. Insurance companies aren’t exactly America’s most loveable industry. Recent premium hikes will result in real hardship for many Americans.

There is, of course, a certain arrogance in the assumption that Obama, Nancy Pelosi and a bevy of government bureaucrats know exactly what something should cost. No doubt, as soon as they finish setting insurance prices, they’ll move on to negotiating Tracy McGrady’s contract renewal.

But more important, attempts to control prices by government fiat ignore basic economic laws — and the result could be disastrous for the American health-care system.

Most people think of prices and costs as the same thing, but from an economic perspective, they aren’t. Prices are what people pay to receive a good or service. Costs are what it takes to produce the goods and services. In this case, limiting the prices that insurers can charge does nothing about the underlying costs of health care.

Insurers unable to charge more for an increasingly expensive product can be expected to trim costs in one of two ways:

• They can drop their most expensive customers — in this case, the sickest, who consume the most health care. Many companies are already doing this, a major source of dissatisfaction with the health-care system. In fact, the president wants to prohibit companies from doing this.
• They can cut back on their reimbursement rates to hospitals and physicians. But neither doctors nor hospitals, any more than insurance companies, are willing to operate at a loss. If payments fall below their costs, they’ll simply stop taking patients. One only has to look at government programs like Medicare and Medicaid to see how this works.

Medicare already reimburses at roughly 80 cents on every dollar of actual costs. Medicaid pays even less. As a result, more than a third of physicians have closed their practices to Medicaid patients; 12 percent no longer accept Medicare patients.

If private insurers begin similarly to cut back their reimbursements, some hospitals may go out of business, and some doctors may close their practices. Retirement in Florida may begin to look a lot better than another snowy New York winter. Others will stop accepting insurance or set up “concierge” practices in which they see only a small number of privately paying patients.

Thus, price controls on insurers will ultimately lead to rationing — the lack of available health-care goods and services.

Read the rest of the column.

From Gary Bauer

Like a monster from a bad horror movie, no matter how many times the American people think the specter of socialized medicine is dead, Democrats keep bringing it back to life. Yesterday, under the pretense of beginning a genuine bi-partisan discussion of healthcare reform, President Obama released his own plan in advance of Thursday’s healthcare summit.

But this invitation to talk came with a threat. If Republicans don’t go along with what Obama has put on the table, Democrats will resort to the reconciliation process. Under that gimmick, they only need 51 votes in the Senate.

How many of you liked the legislation Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi came up with? Well, if you liked the Reid/Pelosi plan then you’ll love Obama’s prescription for socialism. Obama took the Senate’s bill as his starting point and made it worse! One White House spokesman called it “an opening bid.” The White House isn’t likely to find many buyers.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 58% of likely voters opposed the Reid/Pelosi legislation, and 61% wanted Congress and the president to scrap it and start from scratch. The American people demanded a genuine bi-partisan reboot of the entire process. Instead, we’re getting more of what we didn’t want.

House Republican Leader John Boehner issued a statement yesterday blasting the president’s approach: “The president has crippled the credibility of this week’s summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected. This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits.”

Here are some of the details of the president’s proposal.

• It will cost approximately $1 trillion, but no one knows its real cost. The Congressional Budget Office stated that while the plan includes much of what the House and Senate have proposed, “it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones.” But the White House draft was too vague to provide an official cost estimate.

  Think about that for a moment. The president recently used his executive authority to create a new commission to tackle the federal debt. It is widely expected that this commission will propose major tax hikes along with entitlement reform. But at the same time, President Obama is proposing yet another trillion-dollar entitlement program. He insists his healthcare plan won’t add to the deficit. If that’s true, that means he’s taxing one trillion dollars out of the economy, in addition to whatever the debt commission might recommend. How much sense does it make to pile on to the federal government’s already out-of-control entitlement obligations?

• One of the ways Obama purports to pay for his plan is by raising the Medicare payroll tax and applying it to so-called “unearned” income. So if you’re a senior citizen living off investment income, dividends or other savings (which have already been reduced by low interest rates), Barack Obama wants to hit you with another tax that is expected to raise at least $120 billion.
• Remember the “Cornhusker kickback” that Senator Ben Nelson (D) got to help his state of Nebraska offset increased costs? Well, it’s still there, but Obama expands it to every state. In other words, every senator is being offered a bribe in order to expand the government’s role in your life.
• The individual insurance mandate, which many senators and legal experts believe is unconstitutional, is part of Obama’s plan. If the government can compel you to buy health insurance, what else can it force you to do or not do? As George Will recently argued, “Would it be constitutional for the government to legislate compulsory calisthenics for all Americans?” That may seem like a laughable suggestion, but the Japanese government is measuring waistlines.
• In his proposal, Obama more than doubled the penalty on employers who do not provide health insurance – raising the fine from $750 per employee to $2,000.
• A new element of the president’s plan is price controls – giving the government the authority to set insurance rates – meaning more Big Government control and manipulation of industry. The problem with price controls is that they never work and lead to rationing and shortages.
• The president’s plan not only makes abortion a taxpayer-funded healthcare right, but it expands the tax dollars available to pay for the destruction of innocent life. According to Douglas Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, “If all of the president’s changes were made, the resulting legislation would allow direct federal funding of abortion on demand through Community Health Centers, would institute federal subsidies for private health plans that cover abortion on demand (including some federally administered plans), and would authorize federal mandates that would even require non-subsidized private plans to cover elective abortion.”

  The American people overwhelmingly oppose the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortions, but Obama demanded it. In doing so, he completely ignored the concerns of Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and dozens of pro-life members of Congress who supported the Stupak amendment.

From Rasmussen Reports

Voters still strongly oppose the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats and think Congress should focus instead on smaller bills that address problems individually rather than a comprehensive plan.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 41% of voters favor the proposed health care plan, while 56% oppose it. Those figures include 45% who strongly oppose the plan and just 23% who strongly favor it.

Support for and opposition to the plan are at the same levels they’ve been at since just after Thanksgiving.

Democrats continue to strongly support the health care plan much while it is opposed by Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party. Seventy percent (70%) of the Political Class strongly favor the plan, while 57% of Mainstream voters strongly oppose it.

Sixty-three percent (63%) of all voters say a better strategy to reform the health care system would be to pass smaller bills that address problems individually. Twenty-seven percent (27%) still think passing a comprehensive bill that covers all aspects of the health care system is a better idea. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of those who strongly support the president’s plan favor a comprehensive approach, while 85% of those who strongly oppose the current plan say smaller, individually-focused bills are a better way to go.

Earlier this month, just after the president called for a bipartisan summit meeting to get his health care reform plan back on track, 61% of voters said Congress should scrap that plan and start all over again.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The latest findings, from a survey Sunday and Monday nights, come as the president prepares to convene the nationally televised summit meeting on Thursday. Obama is struggling to get some Republican support after the shock GOP win last month in Massachusetts’ special Senate election forced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to admit that she didn’t have even enough Democratic votes to pass the plan.

But despite the president’s efforts since then to draw Republicans into the health care effort, voter opinions seem unchanged.

Just 38% of voters now think it is at least somewhat likely that the plan proposed by the president and congressional Democrats will become law this year, the lowest level of confidence in the bill’s passage to date. That number includes 13% who say passage into law is very likely. But 51% believe passage of the plan this year is unlikely, with 33% who say it’s not very likely and another 18% who view it as not at all likely.

Only 35% of voters believe Congress should pass health care reform before the upcoming midterm elections anyway. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Congress should wait until voters select new congressional representatives in November.

Interestingly, 63% of voters also think it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated this November.

This backlash against Democratic Senate incumbents in particular is being found in a number of states where Rasmussen Reports has been surveying recently, including Arkansas, California, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, Florida, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin.

Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters now rate the president’s handling of the health care reform issue as good or excellent, while 50% think the president has done a poor job. These findings are comparable to voter feelings last month just after the Massachusetts special election.

Not surprisingly, most Democrats give Obama good or excellent marks, while most Republicans and unaffiliated voters rate his performance on health care as poor. Ninety-two percent (92%) of the Political Class say the president has done a good or excellent job. Sixty-one percent (61%) of Mainstream voters think he’s done a poor job on the health care issue.

Just 24% of voters now say health care reform is the budget priority the president is most likely to achieve, the lowest finding in a year of surveying.

From Who Runs Gov

The game of chicken commenceth — right now.

In the course of unveiling Obama’s new health reform proposal on a conference call with reporters this morning, White House advisers made it clearer than ever before: If the GOP filibusters health reform, Dems will move forward on their own and pass it via reconciliation.

The assertion, which is likely to spark an angry response from GOP leaders, ups the stakes in advance of the summit by essentially daring Republicans to try to block reform.

“The President expects and believes the American people deserve an up or down vote on health reform,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said on the call.

Pfeiffer said no decision had been made how to proceed, pending the outcome of the summit. But he added that Obama’s proposal is designed to have “maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform.”

Translation: If the GOP doesn’t cooperate with us in any meaningful sense, we’re moving forward on our own.

Also on the call, White House advisers detailed Obama’s new proposal, which was just posted on the White House web site, and discussed the ways it seeks a compromise between the Senate and House proposals. Among the details:

* As expected, the plan has no public option — but this does not preclude a reconciliation vote on the public option later.

* The proposal boosts the threshold for the “Cadillac” tax on the most expensive health plans from $23,000 for a family plan to $27,500. That’s actually a better deal than some labor officials were expecting, though some House Dems will still be angry that the tax is being included at all.

* The proposal also preserves the Senate bill’s state-based exchanges, and does not have a national exchange, as the House bill did.

* However, House Dems will be cheered by the fact that Obama’s compromise closes the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” coverage gap.

* Also, the bill nixes Ben Nelson’s Nebraska deal and boosts Federal financing for Medicaid expansion in all states.

* And finally, as expected, Obama’s proposal creates a Federal panel to monitor and block exorbitant rate hikes and other unfair practices by the insurance industry.

One final note: On the call, Pfeiffer was careful to note that the proposal is not the product of an agreement between the House and Senate, but rather is “the President’s bill.” This is meant to preclude GOP efforts to cast the proposal as the product of a backroom deal. The lines are drawn.

**************************************

Update: Eric Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring emails a response:

The Obama plan costs a trillion dollars, puts government in control of personal health decisions, and allows the government to set prices in the private market. That mirrors the Pelosi/Reid plans that have already been soundly rejected by the bipartisan majority of Americans.

From FoxNews

Fox News has obtained a letter penned by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) addressed to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

In the letter, they question the president’s true commitment to Bipartisanship and implore the White House to conduct all talks in public. In addition, they also ask the president to take the reconciliation process off the table.

Here is the letter:

February 8, 2010
The Honorable Rahm Emanuel
Chief of Staff
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Emanuel:

We welcome President Obama’s announcement of forthcoming bipartisan health care talks. In fact, you may remember that last May, Republicans asked President Obama to hold bipartisan discussions on health care in an attempt to find common ground on health care, but he declined and instead chose to work with only Democrats. Since then, the President has given dozens of speeches on health care reform, operating under the premise that the more the American people learn about his plan, the more they will come to like it. Just the opposite has occurred: a majority of Americans oppose the House and Senate health care bills and want them scrapped so we can start over with a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses.

Just as important, scrapping the House and Senate health care bills would help end the uncertainty they are creating for workers and businesses and thus strengthen our shared commitment to focusing on creating jobs. Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over so that we can develop a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today that the President is “absolutely not” resetting the legislative process for health care. If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate.Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan way, does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation? As the President has noted recently, Democrats continue to hold large majorities in the House and Senate, which means they can attempt to pass a health care bill at any time through the reconciliation process.

Eliminating the possibility of reconciliation would represent an important show of good faith to Republicans and the American people.If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand? Our ability to move forward in a bipartisan way through this discussion rests on openness and transparency. Will the President include in this discussion congressional Democrats who have opposed the House and Senate health care bills? This bipartisan discussion should reflect the bipartisan opposition to both the House bill and the kickbacks and sweetheart deals in the Senate bill.Will the President be inviting officials and lawmakers from the states to participate in this discussion?

As you may know, legislation has been introduced in at least 36 state legislatures, similar to the proposal just passed by the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate, providing that no individual may be compelled to purchase health insurance. Additionally, governors of both parties have raised concerns about the additional costs that will be passed along to states under both the House and Senate bills. The President has also mentioned his commitment to have “experts” participate in health care discussions. Will the Feb. 25 discussion involve such “experts?” Will those experts include the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who have determined that the both the House and Senate health care bill raise costs – just the opposite of their intended effect – and jeopardize seniors’ access to high-quality care by imposing massive Medicare cuts? Will those experts include the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which has stated that the GOP alternative would reduce premiums by up to 10 percent? Also, will Republicans be permitted to invite health care experts to participate?

Finally, as you know, this is the first televised White House health care meeting involving the President since last March. Many health care meetings of the closed-door variety have been held at the White House since then, including one where a sweetheart deal was worked out with union leaders. Will the special interest groups that the Obama Administration has cut deals with be included in this televised discussion?Of course, Americans have been dismayed by the fact that the President has broken his own pledge to hold televised health care talks. We can only hope this televised discussion is the beginning, not the end, of attempting to correct that mistake. Will the President require that any and all future health care discussions, including those held on Capitol Hill, meet this common-sense standard of transparency and openness?Your answers to these critical questions will help determine whether this will be a truly open, bipartisan discussion or merely an intramural exercise before Democrats attempt to jam through a job-killing health care bill that the American people can’t afford and don’t support. ‘Bipartisanship’ is not writing proposals of your own behind closed doors, then unveiling them and demanding Republican support. Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means.

These questions are also designed to try and make sense of the widening gap between the President’s rhetoric on bipartisanship and the reality. We cannot help but notice that each of the President’s recent bipartisan overtures has been coupled with harsh, misleading partisan attacks. For instance, the President decries Republican ‘obstruction’ when it was Republicans who first proposed bipartisan health care talks last May. The President says Republicans are ‘sitting on the sidelines’ just days after holding up our health care alternative and reading from it word for word. The President has every right to use his bully pulpit as he sees fit, but this is the kind of credibility gap that has the American people so fed up with business as usual in Washington.We look forward to receiving your answers and continuing to discuss ways we can move forward in a bipartisan manner to address the challenges facing the American people.

From the Globle and Mail

The heart and soul of Newfoundland politics is in for repair – and it’s not in his home province or even in Canada, for that matter.

Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams is scheduled for heart surgery in the United States, a move that throws into question his province’s and his nation’s health-care system.

A source confirmed to The Globe and Mail late yesterday that Mr. Williams has left St. John’s for an undisclosed destination in the U.S. to have heart surgery later in the week.

The 59-year-old Conservative left yesterday morning, spokesperson Elizabeth Matthews said, without disclosing his location. While some of his critics were tight-lipped last night, the online public questioned his exodus – why the care he needed was not available in Canada, or whether he preferred treatment in the U.S.

His departure for a U.S. hospital is being met with both sympathy and anger as few details have emerged.

The severity of Mr. Williams’ condition is not publicly known, however he was reportedly not overly concerned about his health, as he told close friends his greatest regret was the possibility of missing his Tuesday night hockey outings.

The remaining details are expected to be revealed at a news conference today by Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale.

At risk is the already tarnished image of the province’s health-care system, which has suffered in recent years.

In October 2008, Mr. Williams apologized for a string of breast cancer test mix-ups. And though he demoted health minister Ross Wiseman last July, he also defended his record, saying there was no other member of his government he’d have rather had lead the portfolio at the time.

The current Minister of Health and Community Services, Jerome Kennedy, declined an interview request last night.

Read the rest of the story