On the recordFebruary 25, 2010
right now there is a meeting at the White House that is being covered extensively by the media live. There has been much anticipation about the meeting between the President and a number of Members of Congress, equally divided between the two bodies, the House and Senate, and the two political parties. It is a chance for both sides to listen to each other. The media has decided that by and large this is going to be unproductive. I watched a good bit of it today. At least people are being open with what they believe and what they want. There clearly are major differences between the two parties when it comes to health care. It goes back a couple, three generations. It certainly goes back to the mid-1960s, to 1965 especially, when the Senate and the House and President Johnson signed the Medicare bill. An overwhelming number of Republicans opposed it and an overwhelming number of Democrats supported it. It wasn't as partisanly charged as this, but it had the same interest groups around it, including the same insurance company opposition, the same accusations by--it was the John Birch Society then. Today it is the tea parties who oppose it. They didn't talk about death panels back then. Perhaps the John Birch Society wasn't as creative as are the tea party people, but they said it would be a takeover by big government of health care; the government would stand between the patient and the doctor. None of that has happened with Medicare.
