Beyond The Summit

What are the lessons learned from this week’s White House health care summit, and how should reform efforts proceed from here?

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said: “The thing I have heard more than anything over the last six or seven months is that the American people want us to scrap this bill. They have said it loud. They have said it clear.”

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said: “We entered this room with the understanding that we agree on 70 percent of what is in the health reform bill. If that is the case, I simply cannot understand the repeated calls by my Republican colleagues to scrap the bill and start anew. That type of rhetoric means you’ve made up your mind that we’re not going to have a health reform bill. And I don’t think that’s consistent with what the American people sent us to Congress to do.”

What is the best course of action at this point, and was the summit at all worthwhile?