A unified proposal?

Both the White House and Republicans understand that the health care summit planned for Feb. 25 is basically for show, but lest there be any doubts, I think this sums things up nicely.

Even as they have criticized the Democrats and cast doubts on the summit, Republicans have not put forward any new, comprehensive health care proposal that would meet the president’s goal of extending coverage to most of the nation’s uninsured. Republicans say that doing so would be too costly and that they do not share the president’s goal of a broad expansion in coverage, but instead want more modest efforts to help control costs.

The GOP simply does not want 30 million more Americans to have health insurance. Full stop. Despite polls that show that most Americans remain leery of the health care proposals in the Houes and Senate, if those proposals pass and Americans start feeling the benefits, those benefits will never go away. In fact, they'll be broadened.

The fact that Republicans are panicking, and demanding that Congressional Democrats stop negotiating for a unified health care bill going into the summit makes me more hopeful than I've been this year.

Also in today's Times, a good run down on one of the GOP's favorite hobby horses, buying insurance across state lines as a way to reduce costs. I find it especially amusing that idiots like Arizona's John Shadegg would look to auto insurance as the model for health care, forgetting, of course, that Republicans bitterly oppose a mandate to buy health insurance -- a mandate that underpins the auto insurance industry.