Almost-Live Health Care Summit Blogging

(Image courtesy of Laffy at the Political Carnival.)

First off, Eric Cantor's a toolbox and industrial glue huffer, so I'll just get that out of the way right now.

2nd, John McCain looked as if he actually did need to be reminded that the election was over. The man's obviously too old to be above ground instead of six feet below it.

3rdly, the President at times comes off looking like a 2nd grade teacher trying to calm down his class in the middle of a sugar buzz. Both parties seem more interested in advancing their talking points but this especially goes for the Republicans.

He was right in calling the Congress out for its massive 2400 page bill and he said just as rightly that when we craft legislation this unwieldy and complicated, it stalls substantive talk.

4th, and I say this just so we're clear on this, Eric Cantor and John McCain have no business being out when the sun is up. Tom Coburn and his "mystery patient" plan to catch fraud qualifies him for assclown of the week, if not the month.

5th, Rep. Slaughter and Clyburn brought up some substantive points, especially Mr. Clyburn when he mentioned the number of patients outside his district who go to the ERs for primary health care, which, of course, can be up to 10 times the cost of primary health provider visits.

As Rep. Clyburn says, this is something that ought to be addressed more substantively.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, to his credit, brought up some good points on the floor of the House recently when he united with the Democrats to abolish lifetime and annual caps on health coverage as well as letting kids stay on their parents' health care policies. These are big provisions in the HCR bill upon which both parties can build.

Lobbyists aside, Republicans and Democrats actually have more in common than they realize in this arena of debate. There's room for progress in this ongoing health care debate but if they don't start achieving more bipartisan consensus, then McCain's and Alexander's idea of scrapping the bill altogether and starting over will look more and more viable. And I don't think anyone wants that, especially Democrats.

As it is, when they broke for lunch, Mitch McConnell had this look on his face that said, "WTF just happened? Was that Baltimore redux?" Then again, McConnell always has that stupified Cabbage Patch doll look on his face.