{"id":367582,"date":"2010-02-23T07:24:34","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T12:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2010\/02\/what-is-the-health-summit-for\/36411\/"},"modified":"2010-02-23T07:24:34","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T12:24:34","slug":"what-is-the-health-summit-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/367582","title":{"rendered":"What is the health summit for?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><![CDATA[The healthcare proposal Obama announced on Monday plainly has Democratic unity, rather than detente with Republicans, in mind. It narrows some of the differences\nbetween the Senate and House bills, but offers no concessions at all to\nthe other side. It adds a new federal regulator for insurance rates (in\nmost cases duplicating the work of state regulators), which might be\nquite a popular idea, with insurance companies announcing big rate\nincreases. And it rolls back the tax on Cadillac plans (raising the\npremium threshold, delaying the start date). That is a great pity,\nsince this was one of the few real incentives for economy in the Senate\nmeasure. Overall, it's a slightly worse design than the Senate bill,\nbut still far better than nothing, so I hope it gets done.It's\ntrue that the proposal entrenches Democratic preferences rather than\nsaying, \"we are open to new ideas.\" But Republicans can hardly\ncomplain. Who believes they would have brought open minds to the summit\nin any event? But if Obama has decided on a Democrats-only strategy,\none interesting question is what purpose Thursday's \"bipartisan summit\"\nis intended to serve. The idea must be to put pressure on\nDemocrats to fall into line--sweetening the pill of a measure many\ndon't like (for any number of reasons) by making Republicans look\nill-prepared and obstructionist for the cameras. Democrats might decide\nthis works for them, but the Republicans will have to screw up quite\nbadly on Thursday for voters at large to buy it. Going in, the whole\nevent now looks too much like an ambush. Obama needed a bipartisan\ngesture or two for camouflage--some sign of good faith, sure to be\nrebuffed. The thinking must be that any such gestures would have made\nDemocratic unity impossible. In other words, get the reform passed\nfirst; worry about public opinion later. As I said, quite a gamble.Will Stage One--just vote this thing through--succeed? Jonathan Chait, rejoicing over the coming conservative freakout, seems to think it will. Well, anyway, healthcare reform is \"very far from dead,\" he says. Megan McArdle disagrees.\nI'm in between. I'm hoping Obama succeeds on this, but I don't see how\nthe chances can be better than 50-50, bearing in mind the Democratic\nsplits, the delays that reconciliation will introduce, and the\nfast-diminishing interval between now and the electoral consequences. But perhaps, now I think of it, this is Chait's position too.[T]he\nlegislative door to health care reform is wide open, and Democrats\nsimply need to walk through it. By no means is it clear that they'll\nsucceed.Like I said, 50-50 at best. Democrats really struggle with those wide open doors.  ]]><br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:69c3279c999f29daf2a6ba947ec72ba4:Tmd3qKNCVPbdR2VpvEL41AZvzSbRz0YB%2BLx%2BnAsBuRdvPxiHzjB%2FRRgqOm88gagu1T%2B28E00MYJb'><img border='0' title='Email this Article' alt='Email this Article' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/emailthis.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:99e4df499a25fc8739084080d38409c9:ZeUnO6dUqO1MC%2BvTyxrNucmxFYLE3GD3qfxuhLK2VT6PiUt20yR0Ccda0mKNr%2FJqk0GJPaFUoo0N'><img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/digg.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:4c29350f39b8d418135ce796106edc3b:9S1oYiG7oUIjBXS5eqM2s9nBDiuSbgexQvuH3EWCKpuYOfNDXffEg%2Bw3YJVFvztHjy82rHmUzxku'><img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/reddit.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:4f2eabf16b80b1bfaff271edf09721b5:iUrPPivGVWnwBl9gKTZ9hwi3%2F7JIPqHCqla9nhiakUZEb%2FnjZ%2B7Nk0faqsL5slzM3XGzU5iEaQX%2F8w%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Twitter' alt='Add to Twitter' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/twitter.png'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:b33c42a471c819454fc21e5340fde888:1Njmm0QfSRTo2WNWtPzzoDt1l4lxhA8IBcY1a6W4vrnV%2BcI64Srn%2FRQ2K%2BMHd9YpHfhZE9aFbVL%2B'><img border='0' title='Add to del.icio.us' alt='Add to del.icio.us' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/delicious.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:2dcb03eadbb0df83476acff80cdd2e16:uVoh7nzBn%2FhZJXTlXo3Om3GsxwB6QNFP64fO%2BpNAX%2BkKQ0nySkE%2FyF74mvsgAZXkkumXTnUMq%2BkJig%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to StumbleUpon' alt='Add to StumbleUpon' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/stumbleit.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n  <a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http:\/\/www.pheedcontent.com\/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:44382975b334a30199810f68767a3bab:PGBDaS8yxokp5RbJyZaq%2BCVQ8zgMdQiU7HPuxfnklCb3hSJollcP6mrzmiqNWyqVnMGl784wGCGayQ%3D%3D'><img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http:\/\/images.pheedo.com\/images\/mm\/facebook.gif'\/><\/a><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=bce51ee9de527cf1169f65da8e38abbf&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=bce51ee9de527cf1169f65da8e38abbf&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2225\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}