I know he famously tells commenters who suggest topics he might cover that it's his blog and he'll post what he wants to, so...would it help?

Bless FAIR and keep them funded. Also, CJR tends to cover things like this -- is there an email address for sending tips to them?

Given how the MCM works, perhaps we should be grateful Obama decided to make that snarky comment about "bleeding heart liberals' who advocate single payer.... Of course, he also sent a strong message to his 'bots that they should ignore single payer.

Wow.

Thinking back to Julie Ravner's (NPR health insurance expert reporter) comment on the Diane Rehm Show that every time she appears on a show where the audience can ask questions, she's asked about single payer. And tells them the same thing: Won't happen here. It's the proposal which saves the most money, but can't happen here. We're Merkins and we do things the Merkin Way (which seems to be to reward the wealthy and powerful and screw the non-wealth and powerless --my opinion, not hers afaik).

3 cheers for everyone who ever wrote a letter to the editor about single payer, but because other than Mike Dennison, that is the only way we can get this out to the non-activist part of the population.

For ease of linking, here is the CNN transcript link again

[Responding to Jo Ann Emerson]...I want to be clear about my own position in this process.

During the campaign, I put forward a plan for health care reform. I thought it was a excellent plan, but I don't presume that it was a perfect plan or that it was the best possible plan. It's conceivable that there were other ideas out there that we had not thought of.

If there is a way of getting this done where we're driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate, and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I'd be happy to do it that way. If there was a way of doing it that involved more government regulation and involvement, I'm happy to do it that way as well.

I just want to figure out what works. And that just requires us to actually look at the evidence and try to figure out, based on the experience that's now been accumulated for a lot of years, you know, how can we improve the system? And I'm absolutely confident that there's going to be some low-hanging fruit. For example, the issue of health IT, I don't think there's any dispute between Newt Gingrich and Ted Kennedy that if we digitalize our health care system, we're going to save money over the long term, and we're going to reduce error and save lives. There are going to be some other areas that's not such low-hanging fruit, and there's greater dispute about what might work. But we have to keep that open mind that you called for, Jo Ann. That's going to be critical.

Let me go to Max Baucus and then Chuck Grassley. I want to get a sense of -- the folks on the Finance Committee, they're going to have some influence on this process. Just a little bit.

(LAUGHTER) SNIP

SEN. MAX BAUCUS (D), MONTANA: SNIP

A few hours ago, you mentioned that President Roosevelt tried to accomplish health care reform. He's over there in the corner. And I think he'd be very proud.

OBAMA: There's Teddy. The other Teddy.

BAUCUS:SNIP
Second, the American public wants it. That's a no-brainer.

We're in a time in American history the American people want health care reform for all the reasons that you mentioned. This is, as you mentioned, a moral and a fiscal imperative. There's no doubt about that.
SNIP
And you've started this process, I think, in very much the right way. Namely, getting us all together...SNIP
But it has to be a uniquely American solution. We're not Europe, we're not Canada, we're not Japan, we're not other countries. We're Americans, with public and private participation.

[Does he not know that some European and Asian countries have public and private participation??? But, of course, those countries' insurance companies are essentially regulaged utilities, not fortune makers for the executives.]

And there's no doubt in my mind, it's tapping into the good old American "can do" and entrepreneurial spirit that we're going to find a solution. SNIP

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY (R), IOWA: SNIP

From our breakout session, you'd probably get the idea that it's pretty easy to get done. We know it's very difficult to get done. But without that sort of feeling starting out, nothing would get done.

And I think you served with us in the Senate long enough to know that Max Baucus and I have a pretty good record of working out bipartisan things. Neither one of our parties get everything that they want, but we've had a pretty good record. I think only two bills in eight years that haven't been bipartisan.

And so we have a process in place that has hearings coming up. It has a process of getting roundtable discussions, getting stakeholders in, getting authorities in. And we expect to have work on this in a committee in June. Maybe it will sound a little ambitious, but if you aren't ambitious on a major problem like this that the country decides need to be done, it will never get done.

So the only thing that I would throw out for your consideration -- and please don't respond to this now, because I'm just asking you just to think about it -- there's a lot of us that feel that the public option, that the government is an unfair competitor, and that we're going to get an awful lot of (INAUDIBLE). And we have to keep what we have now strong and make it stronger.

[Really, Sen. Grassley? Keep the parasites and make them stronger? So where will costs be cut in that case??? Some of the hosts already sucumb to the parsites; do you really want to make them even more powerful/stronger? The hosts, we who need insurance, can't survive much more!]

OBAMA: OK. Well, let me just -- I'm not going to respond definitively.

The thinking on the public option has been that it gives consumers more choices and it helps give -- keep the private sector honest, because there's some competition out there. That's been the thinking.

I recognize, though, the fear that, if a public option is run through Washington and there are incentives to try to tamp down costs or at least what shows up on the books, and you've got the ability in Washington apparently to print money, that private insurance plans might end up feeling overwhelmed.

So I recognize that there's that concern. I think it's a serious one and a real one, and we'll make sure that it gets addressed, partly because I assume it'll be very -- be very hard to come out of committee unless we're thinking about it a little bit. And so we want to make sure that that's something that we pay attention to.
SNIP (My emphasis)

C-Span just rebroadcast the (were there more than one?) break out session and the closing speech by Obama and the Q&A (the amount of time spent sucking up to the president was quite amazing!).

The breakout session is about 40 minutes, and the closing remarks about 55 minutes. I haven't seem the opening remarks which run about 20 minutes.

Why wasn't Kucinich there? Elizabeth Edwards? Obama did remark that this healthcare summit was better attended than the fiscal responsibility summit.... Well, it took pressure from the DFHs to get some of those attendees invited!