David Gergen

One of the things that's lacking in this bill -- something to be addressed is, are there ways you can provide rewards to people who look after themselves, who live well, who exercise regularly, who don't smoke, don't drink to excess…

I think there's no way that the American people will ever accept single-payer system, a government-run health care system for all.

The trial lawyers are the ones who fiercely want to protect the right to sue all the doctors, and they're driving up cost. But the trial lawyers are extremely allied with the Democratic Party.

Even if the Democrats go alone. I think the chances are growing that they will go for something more modest than what the president wants. I think it's -- and there is a growing chance we're going to have a complete failure.

I think one of the other aspects of this is very fundamental to who we are as a people. There are a lot of sociologists and historians will tell you we as American people are just different. We're an outliers measured in many ways. Our…

If they want to make it truly bipartisan, one way to reach out to Republicans is to say, let's do something about all these lawsuits that are forcing doctors to do practice defensive medicine.

I think we're almost on a knife edge on this.

I think the president has to now take charge of the conversation and the negotiations and not just leave it to a lot of other people.

I think the chances are growing that they will go for something more modest than what the president wants.

It's about health insurance reform instead of health reform. It's not comprehensive in the sense of trying to change the whole system.

I think there's no way that the American people will ever accept single-payer system, a government-run health care system for all.

If they want to make it truly bipartisan, one way to reach out to Republicans is to say, let's do something about all these lawsuits that are forcing doctors to do practice defensive medicine.

I think the Clintons misread that some, and I think President Obama has misread that some. When you come and try to sell something big, big government to the American people, they tend to be very, very weary of it.

The trial lawyers are the ones who fiercely want to protect the right to sue all the doctors, and they're driving up cost. But the trial lawyers are extremely allied with the Democratic Party.

59 percent of Americans would oppose a health care plan that was passed only by Democrats.

I think it's in the president's interest to push forward as far as he possibly can to see if he can find a way to bipartisanship.

I have been very surprised by their failures on persuading people.

If you can find a way to bipartisanship and it may not be possible, these town halls, I think...

I'd like to say -- well, I just want to disagree with David Frum on one point. And that is, he's right that there are significant Democrats who are not in favor of the public option but the overwhelming majority of people in the Democratic…

I think that was the logical interpretation especially after President Obama just the day before said that the public option was only a sliver -- a sliver of his whole plan.

I think this is putting democracy to a real test and leaders on both sides need to step up and put an end to the disruptive brawling.

It seems to me that it's not what the White House is doing ' where is the Republican leadership on this question'

The real question facing us as a people right now is are we a self governing people or not?

George W. Bush and Barack Obama come to Washington and promise to make a change, make this our discourse, make things civil. And it just gets worse.

If they're going to help stir people up, that's fine but they now have to take responsibility for the peoples showing up and say 'We've got a hand in this, we want to do this in a civil way.'