Obama Won't Drop Potential Use Of Reconciliation On Health Care

President Obama wants to keep the option of using reconciliation to pass health care reform despite calls from Republican lawmakers that he agree to drop the parliamentary maneuver as a "good faith" gesture" before their bipartisan health care summit.

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday that Republicans coming to the West Wing for the much-anticipated February 25 meeting would be better off arriving "without preconditions." Asked whether Obama would commit to not using reconciliation -- which would allow aspects of health care legislation to be considered in the Senate by an up-or-down vote -- Gibbs replied:

The president is not going to eliminate things based on preconditions. And if that's one of their preconditions, the president doesn't agree to limiting the way we are going to discuss this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/09/obama-wont-drop-potential_n_455625.html

There you go! Now that wasn't so hard, was it? Obama, unequiviocally, refused to consider hitting the 'reset' button as the Republicans demanded in their letter, yesterday.

before anyone even asked them to.

this 'summit' BETTER back the GOP into a corner. a corner they should have been backed into last summer.

When they show up they will be talking about medical litigation caps I'm sure and the numbers will be brought out again showing that little would actually be saved and compensation for those suffering horrendous losses due to negligence would be capped. Here are some articles about this point to remind you of the studies done which refute the RW claims that 130 billion could be saved. The total malpractice insurance bill is 6-7 billion and the rest of the claimed 130 is a guess at defensive medicine practiced to avoid liability. The question is, of course, if the doctor is covered by malpractice insurance, wouldn't just doing regular good medicine be enough to protect him and his assets? Or is the doctor doing the extra tests etc. because he wants to practice the best medicine and have the best possible results?

Republicans are playing this because everyone hates to hear about a poor doctor being sued by people hoping to win the lottery and because they hate lawyers, especially those walking away with a third of a huge settlement, when they haven't even suffered a loss.
The republican talking points are all based on simple minded ideas, that rely on everyone taking them on face value, black or white, without looking closer at the issue. The estate tax argument is similar, as is the let's just cut taxes across the board talk.

Still, if they are going to argue that this really leads to huge unwarranted costs, they should have to show some real meaningful numbers.

The current HCR bill has in it trials for implementing some litigation reforms which would then give real numbers to study. States are free now to restrict payouts for these suits and Texas has one limiting them to $250,000. Studies show there has been no decrease in health care costs per capita compared to other un limiting states.

I'm including an article from the right wing rag American Spectator just to show the republicans argument and how it is backed by all the right wing think tanks.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112454986

http://www.factcheck.org/president_uses_dubious_statistics_on_costs_of.html

http://spectator.org/blog/2009/08/27/conservative-leaders-on-costly

I'm not a lawyer, so don't jump all over me please.