Did you watch the Healthcare Summit?

I'm one of those who were actually nerdy enough to record it in it's entirety. C-span 3 aired it all day. I recorded it so I didn't have to watch it all in one setting though, I am still watching it and will have more thoughts later (maybe). My thoughts were that it isn't going to do anything to further the cause. If it had been done a long time ago and on a regular basis it may have done a lot of good and we might have something now. Of course this would also depend on having folks in that room who actually wanted to do sometyhing propperly. I'm sure if you are an avowed democrat you thought the democrats "won" the whole affair and if you are an avowed republican you thought the republicans "won" it, even though it wasn't suposed to be a contest of any sort. What this WAS good for though is putting all the actions and thoughts out there for US to see. And THIS is what what I was looking forward to.

I caught little bits and pieces of it. All I can say is that everyone will put their own personal political spin on it...as I have already witnessed. I would say that I had hope that this summit would help the two sides to work together so that something decent could be produced...but I'm sure it was back to business as usual for all of them as soon as they left the building.

I only saw and heard bits and pieces of it and heard comments about it.. I figured it would come to basically nothing and was as ya say, pretty much for show.. not much listening/compromise..

The dems tried to fake that they were in agreement on things, but the truth is they are as far apart as ever. The reps want them to scrap the bill, start over and give them some real input in the process. They are not going to do so, will try to use reconciliation, but I think the bill won't pass. It was for show. For "transparency" but you know they had to be extremely guarded in all their responses. Some transparency, huh.

Well, yes, they were all polite. The only person who behaved rudely was President Obama who basically shut the conversation down if he was disagreed with (such as who had the correct figures from the CBO report - I am right, no don't email me your proof I am wrong, I am right) or if anyone thought they should get equal speaking time. Obama also introduced irrelevant stories about the auto insurance he had when he was a young kid. He did try to look interested, that part was a good show. He pretended to attend to those speaking when they didn't disagree with him. I agree it would have been nice to have seen these conversations way back when, but they didn't let us, because it was done in closed-door meetings and the opposition was not invited to most of those. It was all for show. It was so Obama could say he listened to all viewpoints before deciding he was right and he just has to get this bill passed because there's no chance for bipartisanship agreement no matter how hard he tries.

I only caught President Obama's wrap-up. Glad I missed the rest of the "show". I didn't expect anything to come of it, and it didn't.

No, I did not watch the healthcare summit. However, never forget that these republicans and democrats are game players and would play for as long as it pleases them at the expense of us all.

It was too painfully boring to watch the thing in its entirety. What I did pick up, however, was the "show" factor. President Obama seemed to be extremely annoyed if anyone actually questioned how business was handled to this point. This appeared to be nothing but a staged discusion to give the left-wing media something to hold over the right's head and to tamp down the negative publicity coming from the right about Republicans being "shut out." "Well, President Obama has reached across the aisle on many occasions -- the summit, the summit!" It's just more BS to feed the public to make up for the lack of transparency thus far and also the lack of bipartisanship. Yeah, they can all sit there for hours and act somewhat civilized. But as far as accomplishing anything, I think not.