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.
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