Last week the White House Writers Group of former Reagan/Bush speechwriters and West Wing Writers, who flacked for Bill Clinton, staged a conference in Orlando with 230 health care professionals, corporate execs and members of congress: "America’s Health Care at Risk: Finding a Cure."
Karl Rove, James Carville, Tom Daschle, former Mich. Gov. John Engler, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist were the stars. Rep. Tom Coburn, R-TX, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, beamed in by satellite.
The project: tout health care as our next major financial crisis:
If health reform doesn’t come soon, they said, the $2.3-trillion sector could collapse of its own weight. They say health-system spending is as inflated as the real-estate market of three years ago, and some say it needs regulation as much as today’s banking industry.
"It's not sustainable," said John Engler, president of the National Association of Manufacturers and former Republican governor of Michigan. "That bubble's going to burst."
"There's a true crisis in American health care," agreed Irwin Redlener of Columbia University, co-chair of Doctors for Obama. "We're looking at a financial meltdown."
Miami Herald reporter John Dorschner was the only traditional media journalist I could find who covered the event.
But commercial information outlets like ShopFloor.com, the DailyKos of the Nat’l Assn. of Manufacturers, health08.org, the DailyKos of corporate health care giant Kaiser-Permanente, and Florida Health News, the DailyKos of eight public service providers and foundations.
Burson-Marsteller, a leading global public relations and communications firm, wire-serviced a news release boasting they would provide ‘communications and media relations support’ for the conference.
Fla. gov. Charlie Crist posted a news release touting his participation.
Carville and Rove crooned their usual duet. Carville: reform ain’t gonna happen...
"My sense is there are too many knives flying through the air right now," longtime Democratic consultant James Carville said in an interview Wednesday night.
He believes America needs a huge reform "because each of us is one disease away from financial disaster. But the bailout of AIG for $85 billion, $5.3 trillion to pay for mortgages" will sap a lot of energy and money out of the federal government. He thinks healthcare reform will have to wait for a "better economy."
Karl: we don’t need no stinkin' health care reform...
...Republican healthcare reforms, helping the uninsured with tax credits, didn’t need Washington money to work.
Oh, and McCain’s health care sham?
"I think it’s very sell-able," he said...