Frank Luntz warns GOP: Health reform is popular

So it's not about what might be best for Americans struggling with health care costs, it's only about semantics..........they've got to get those zingers in and make their point. Got it.

Thanks, Herring...........I'll definitely be on the lookout for flying BS when Republicans start talking healthcare reform.

Talk about flying BS, what do you think about Sen. "mad" Max Baucus (D. Montana)? He's all about bringing the gavel down on guaranteed health care. He had a physician arrested during the Senate Finance Committee hearing on health care. She told him, "we need single payer health care." He said, "...we need more police." (Talk about...zingers!?!)

If you boil the entire construct of the GOP to the specialized focus of someone who consults on language, then I can see where you'd come to such a conclusion.

Makes as much sense as using James Carville to define the entire Democrat party.

The Republicans had already assembled a task force for health care reform back in January before Obama even took office, and this comment creates an impossible scenario...one which the democrats are becoming famous for creating. They claim (falsely so) that the republicans haven't offered alternatives. And then when it turns out that they have, the democrats just make fun of them...I can't think of any other term for them except the "make fun congress." They make fun of republican politicians and they make fun of American citizens. Of course it's easy to do since the republicans actually only have a symbolic voice in congress and hardly have any expectation that the democrats would actually have the courage to take up debate with them on the floor, but obviously Pelosi has to go with whatever works for her.

BTW, folks have to understand it's ACTUALLY possible to discuss health care reform outside of a socialized alternative.

You've made some good points here.

And FWIW, I recognize that the "flying BS" alluded to in my previous post comes just as thick and fast from the Democratic side of the aisle.

I don't believe a word ANY of 'em say.

Whatever legislation comes out of the Congress, I think everyone will be forced to compromise for the time being, Republicans, Democrats and in-betweeners.

Republicans and ObamaCare The sound of silence is deafening.

Listen. That sound of silence? That's what's known as the united Republican response to President Barack Obama's drive to socialize health care....

Republicans? They're trying to figure out what they think.

Well, not all of them. Earlier this week I ended up in the office of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, where the doctor was hosting North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr. The duo is, for the second time, crafting a comprehensive reform that would lower costs, cover the uninsured, and put Americans in control of their health care. And while the senators decline to talk GOP politics, their bill raises the multitrillion-dollar question: Will the party have the nerve or sense to coalesce behind some such conservative alternative to the Democratic product?...

Not that the senators don't think Republicans need to make clear to the country that the public option is, in Mr. Burr's words, "a fast track to a single-payer system." But they are also operating on the belief that Republicans must go beyond Band-Aid solutions to embrace, as Mr. Coburn puts it, a "complete transformation" of a system that is "structurally" flawed.

Their own bill overhauls the tax code, currently stacked in favor of corporate employees, to provide a tax credit to every American to purchase insurance. It expands health-savings accounts. It creates state health-insurance exchanges, where private insurers compete to cover Americans, including the uninsured. (This is partly modeled on the Medicare drug program, which has provided seniors with choice and held down costs.)

More broadly, it seeks to reorient financial incentives so that the system is no longer focused, as Mr. Coburn puts it, on "sick care," but on preventing the chronic diseases that eat 75% of health expenditures. These incentives would be used to lower costs and discourage insurers from cherry-picking patients. The bill also dives into Medicare and Medicaid reform....

As for Messrs. Coburn and Burr, they spent a good half hour with me enthusiastically explaining why a competitive market would improve health, provide control and choice, lower costs, and tackle entitlements. It's a good pitch. If only the rest of America could hear the party make it.

full piece:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124173977440798743.html