Please discuss as the President announces his final plan for health-care reform.

Some excerpts, sent in advance:

“I don’t believe we should give government bureaucrats or insurance company bureaucrats more control over health care in America. I believe it’s time to give the American people more control over their own health insurance. I don’t believe we can afford to leave life-and-death decisions about health care to the discretion of insurance company executives alone. I believe that doctors and nurses like the ones in this room should be free to decide what’s best for their patients.

The proposal I’ve put forward gives Americans more control over their health care by holding insurance companies more accountable. It builds on the current system where most Americans get their health insurance from their employer. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Because I can tell you that as the father of two young girls, I wouldn’t want any plan that interferes with the relationship between a family and their doctor.”

***

“So this is our proposal. This is where we’ve ended up. It’s an approach that has been debated and changed and I believe improved over the last year. It incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans – including some of the ideas that Republicans offered during the health care summit, like funding state grants on medical malpractice reform and curbing waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system. My proposal also gets rid of many of the provisions that had no place in health care reform – provisions that were more about winning individual votes in Congress than improving health care for all Americans.”

***

“At stake right now is not just our ability to solve this problem, but our ability to solve any problem. The American people want to know if it’s still possible for Washington to look out for their interests and their future. They are waiting for us to act. They are waiting for us to lead. And as long as I hold this office, I intend to provide that leadership. I don’t know how this plays politically, but I know it’s right. And so I ask Congress to finish its work, and I look forward to signing this reform into law.”

The White House has put the proposal up for you to read.

slacktivist: Rumor-panic, defined

Prairie Weather: Best one minute summary of health care summit available

PERRspectives: GOP revives the "Starve the Beast" amendment

Politics in the Zeros: Whole Foods Market "organic" food made in China

The Inverse Square Blog: The GOP War On Knowledge...or how the skids are being greased for America's decline and fall

The Come And Take It Blog: So much for rugged individualism and 'independence'. Federal spending in the budget has grown by over 100% during Rick Perry's time as Texas governor. (h/t Bay Area Houston)

DOWNLOADS: (824)

PLAYS: (2452)

Embed

The obsession Republicans have with lawsuits and the amount of money someone should receive if they win a case is very perplexing and disingenuous to me. I mean, they are the first people to use lawyers and sue you, like Fox News did to Al Franken over a book. But during the Obama health-care summit, I heard more garbage about "tort reform" from the Republicans as if it will cure our ailing health-care system. (Sen. Dick Durbin dispelled that myth perfectly, by the way.)

But that was just a drop in the bucket compared to the garbage we get served up on a daily basis from the media elite pundits who take to our airwaves and say the most insipid things to defend their positions. Fox News' Megyn Kelly earlier this week gave probably the most ludicrous argument against trial lawyers and for tort reform than anyone I've ever seen. She sacrificed her arm for the cause. For some reason, if malpractice cases disappeared, suddenly health care premiums would majestically be reduced.

Kelly was discussing tort reform with Debbie Wassermann-Schultz and dove into the twilight zone by arguing that if her arm was cut off, it really wasn't worth all that much as long as you can still function. And what the hell? It's only an arm. I mean how much of an impact does it have on your life if you lose one arm, because you have a back up, right?

Kelly: this is a CNN poll and thy ask people about tort reform and 66% of those asked said they favor limiting the amount of money patients can get if they win a medical malpractice lawsuit. 66 % want that. 33 % don't want that. Why can't there be an agreement on tort reform?

Schultz: They support that until it's them or their family member that is injured in a medical malpractice suit and then the poll numbers change.

Kelly: You just have to limit the economic damage, in other words you, if a doctor cuts my arm off. I can get the money back from what my life is to live like without this arm so I can function. You can't get punitive damages.

WTF? How does a person figure out how much one of my limbs is worth? And then I'm not allowed to get punitive damages because I don't deserve it? Are you confused?

You know, if some moron of a doctor cut off my arm through incompetence, not only would I want to get enough money to make my life whole, I would want to make sure the doctor paid a price too, just to try to assure it didn't happen to anyone else. It might not put him out of business, but it would take a piece out of his hide that he would never forget.

Maybe we should have Kelly draw up a diagram of a body and then monetize each part as it relates to how a person functions. She could then pass it on to Michael Steele, Sarah Palin and the teabaggers, because I'm sure they would argue that one foot is only worth about thirty three hundred dollars and sixteen cents.

Why would anyone care if I won $10 million dollars from a f*&king doctor if he cut my leg off and I sued his ass because he was supposed to only drain a little fluid out of my knee? This is the kind of crap Republicans argue for on Fox News every day, and conservative pundits on all the channels spew regularly. They really are ethically bankrupt.

DOWNLOADS: (751)

PLAYS: (8155)

Embed

Grandpa McCrankypants got his chance at the Health Care Summit to voice his "concerns" about health care reform. Funnily enough, his "concerns" sounded an awful lot like Republican talking points with a splash of electoral sour grapes thrown in.

Thank you, Mr. President and I understand the four categories. But there is a big category that the people in my state and across this country are deeply concerned about. And that’s not just the product that we are examining today, the 2,400 pages, but the process we’ve gone through to reach that. Now, both of us during the campaign, promised change in Washington. In fact, eight times you said that negotiations on health care reform would be conducted with the C-Span cameras. I’m glad, more than a year later, that they are here. Unfortunately, this product was not produced in that fashion. It was produced behind closed doors. It was produced with unsavory—and I say that with respect—deal-making. The “Louisiana Purchase”, the funding of $300 million for one state, the “Cornhusker Kickback,” which is, I understand now, been done away with. One of the things as provisions of this legislation that was particularly offensive was the carve out for 800,000 for Florida seniors exempt from cuts in Medicare Advantage Program. There’s 330,000 seniors under Medicare Advantage in my home state of Arizona. They’re deeply concerned about that. They’re deeply concerned about the carve-outs for Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Michigan, Connecticut, $100 million for a hospital in Connecticut. Why? Why should that happen? They don’t understand it. And at the townhall meetings I conduct all over my state, people are angry. We promised them change in Washington. And what we got was a process that you and I both said we would change in Washington.

Oh, sweet Jeebus on a popsicle stick. Can you believe the concern trolling here? Hey John, want to know why there was a carve-out for Connecticut? Why don't you ask your bestest buddy, Lieberman, who hemmed and hawed his support in order to get on TV as much as possible. Are you seriously blaming Obama for the lack of change in the way the Senate must do business? Why don't you look in the mirror and ask yourself how much your party has contributed to that change.

Frankly, responding to McCain's concern trolling is laughable. Which is why Obama's response is the only way to do so.

OBAMA: Let me just make this point, John, because we are not campaigning anymore.

McCAIN: I'm reminded of that every day.

OBAMA: So we can spend the remainder of the time with our respective talking points going back and forth, we were supposed to be talking about insurance reform. Obviously I'm sure that Harry Reid and Chris Dodd and others who went through an exhaustive process through both the House and the Senate with the most hearings, the most debates on the floor, the longest markup in 22 years on each of these bills, will have a response for you. My concern is, if we do that, we are essentially back on Fox News and MSNBC on the split screen. My hope would be is that we can just focus on the issues about how we get a bill done.

Suh-nap! Poor Grampy could only sputter at that point.

DOWNLOADS: (726)

PLAYS: (1836)

Embed

Head. Bangs. Desk.

Reason #2,348,293,297 why Americans are so tragically misinformed about the issues facing us today. CNN cut away from the Health Care Summit today to give us the oh-so-important musings of former Nixon speechwriter and D-list actor Ben Stein and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. What? We need to cut away to get more unsubstantiated talking points?

But it gets even better. Stein launches into his socio-economic theories of why health care reform is unpopular with the Republican Party, and it's not because they're beholden to corporations and worship at the altar of the "free markets". It's not because their bank accounts are busting from donations by the health care industry. It's not even because they reflexively obstruct and are against anything the Obama administration is for. Oh no, it's because Republicans pay more taxes than Democrats do:

You asked one of the most brilliant questions I have ever heard anyone ask on TV, which is why are so many Republicans against more government interference in the health care system, and so many Democrats in favor of it? And the answer is much higher percentage of Republicans are taxpayers than Democrats and the Republicans are the people paying for it, and the Democrats are the people receiving it. So that has a lot to explain there.

There are a tremendous number of wealthy Democrats and wealthy Republicans, but as a general matter, Republicans as a group pay income tax at a much higher rate than Democrats, and I think that has a lot to do with everything. They also have a much higher rate, and are paying members of the insurance pools, and they realize that the insurance premiums are going up so that people who otherwise would not get insurance are going to get insurance and it has a lot to do with the fact that Republicans are a different group of people than Democrats.

You have to ask yourself why CNN felt that Ben Stein's opinion on anything (let us not forget that he also rejects evolution) is at all informative to the American public.

In fact, feel free to ask them directly: http://www.cnn.com/feedback/

DOWNLOADS: (947)

PLAYS: (7798)

Embed

Eric Cantor wanks away about the 2000 page bill and complains that some people might have to change coverage, the usual government interference with big business stuff and whatnot. Obama called him out on his "props" mentality while trying to discuss health care and the proper role of government oversight. Democrats have done a horrible job on explaining government's role in our lives can be a great thing instead of the republican line that government is the problem.

Obama: We could set up a system where food was cheaper than it is right now if we just eliminated meat inspectors, and we eliminated any regulations on how food is distributed and how it's stored. I'll bet in terms of drug prices we would definitely reduce prescription drug prices if we didn't have a drug administration that makes sure that we test the drugs so that they don't kill us, but we don't do that.

We make some decisions to protect consumers in every aspect of our lives.

Under Republicans, all safety measures and regulations of any kind only stifle the free market capitalism that they cherish. The people harmed along the way are just collateral damage.

Yeah, they're back at it. Let us know if you see any clipworthy moments...

And here's an illuminating link, courtesy of The Rachel Maddow show, the Sunlight Foundation is live streaming the summit and providing detailed information about who is donating to which politician. Now you can see in whose interest these politicos are operating.

DOWNLOADS: (1181)

PLAYS: (5596)

Embed

Michael Steele went on MSNBC this morning before the health-care summit and began attacking President Obama for a "dog and pony show" -- and claimed that the president should have held this summit a year ago, when things were just getting started.

The problem with this: Obama did. On March 5 of last year. Fully televised. All that.

Republicans were so busy back then concocting plans to scuttle ANY health-care reform, though, that it kinda slipped their minds.

Kudos to Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie for calling him out for it:

STEELE: This whole dog and pony show that we're about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago, when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for health care. This is how you should have started it - bipartisan, public forum, CSPAN, your cameras rolling to capture this and to capture, most importantly, what the American people want. And right now, they want us to start over, and I think we should.

TODD: Chairman Steele, in fairness to them, I mean, it was a year ago that they actually had a summit.

GUTHRIE: On March 5th.

TODD: And it wasn't just the legislative leaders. They brought in folks from the industry as well. And that one was televised. So...does that one not count? I'm just curious.

STEELE: Well, apparently it didn't. Because we don't have health care.

You know, you really can't blame Republicans for wanting to fire Steele as the RNC chair, when the level of incompetence is this deep.

But we progressives hope he sticks around, just for the comic relief.

From our friend Andy Cobb at The Second City Network. Yeah, CSpan will have live coverage, along with others, and it's also live-streamed at the White House website.

Regular comment guidelines apply; let us know what you're seeing and what you think.

(Nicole:) I'm going to sticky this post on top through the duration of the Health Care Summit. Regular posts will continue to appear BELOW this post. Please limit your comments on this post to the Health Care Summit