Health care summit - 2

Here are some reactions of observers of the summit.

Highly respected liberal blogger Digby:

As a good liberal political junkie I watched the summit today and saw Democrats staying within the bounds of reality in discussing the various ideas on the table and I saw the Republicans making things up. . . .

However, if I were to tune in to this summit without having a fairly good grasp of the politics in play, I'm afraid I might come away from it thinking that both sides are equally earnest in trying to fix the problems with our health care system and they both have equally good ideas. After all, they told us that all day . . . .

The fact remains that Republicans and certain conservative Democrats are bad faith players in this process. They have no serious plan to fix the health care system but this summit's optics may have led people to erroneously believe they do.

Ellen Shaffer, responding to two of the Republicans' chief ideas about health reform, health savings accounts and malpractice liability reform, pointed out:

Republicans argue that high deductible plans with health savings accounts makes people better shoppers for health care. President points out that these plans work best, if at all, for healthy people with high disposable income.

[Henry Waxman (D-CA) said] California already has implemented medical malpractice reforms. It hasn't reduced health care costs for Californians, who now face 39% increases in the individual market.

It remains to be seen how the MSM plays this, what they choose to highlight. Will they play it as everyone's ideas getting equal play or will they show Republicans repeatedly touting ideas that have already been discredited?

Ralph