Paging Dr. Steele: What the RNC Head Didn't Know About Health Care Reform

The always-affable Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele appeared in Washington Monday to lead the charge against President Barack Obama's health care reform efforts, reminding his audience that the Hippocratic Oath compels doctors to first do no harm in their efforts to cure patients of their ills.

It's advice a dutiful staff member might have given the chairman before heading into the National Press Club to dissect the president's policies, while also declaring, "I don't do policy."

To begin the program, Steele delivered a well-crafted speech that painted the Democrats' health care reform bills as risky experiments on the American people. The GOP chairman gave quotable quotes ("only Washington could make saving money more expensive,") dispensed several doses of policy prescriptions (tort reform, group pricing, and tax credits to make care cheaper); challenged the conservative group of Blue Dog Democrats to prove their independence from Nancy Pelosi and told fed up and/ or scared voters to call their congressman and tell them how they really feel. Finally, Steele implored President Obama to slow his rush to reform, asked God to bless America and headed into the Q&A session with confidence.

And that's when the patient went into defib.

Over the course of Steele's next 30 minutes of off-the-cuff remarks, Steele revealed that fellow Republicans (along with Democrats), "lacked the will" to tackle health care reform earlier, that the GOP does not know how to pay for health care reform ("we haven't begun to do that dissection yet"), that Steele disagrees with Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign proposal to tax health benefits, and that the House, Senate and RNC don't seem to be communicating all that well on health care at the moment. When asked about the strategy of Republicans' legislative responses, he said, "That is a strategy that the leadership works out. I don't get to make that play call. I have enough play calls I've got to worry about at the RNC."

Other memorable moments from the event:

Question: Does Barack Obama's health care reform represent socialism?

Answer: Yes. Next question.

Question: If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we provide 40 million Americans with health care this year?

Answer: Bingo.

Question: Mr. Steele, is it morally acceptable for 30 to 40 million Americans to be without health insurance?

Answer: I don't know if that's a consideration for politicians or a pastor, but what I do know it is that it is important and imperative to get this right. (Steele went on to say it is morally wrong to saddle future generations with a debt burden they cannot pay.)

Of all of the questions that tripped Steele up, it was the most straight-forward that seemed to send him into rambling circles, if not stunned silence.

Question: How would you make health care affordable? How many people would be covered? Would doctors be reimbursed by the patient or by the procedure?

Answer: Well, I think that that's a very good question, and really gets to the crux of what we have to get to. The meat of this situation is drilling down on questions like that and really looking at the fiscal, as well as the relationship impact that's involved here.

Over the next several minutes, Steele explained he was not proposing any quick fixes, that he doesn't have his head in the sand or his eye up in the sky dreaming, that he knows this is going to take hard work.

"We're rushing to get a health care bill passed by the end of the month without discussion, without anyone answering the question who really needs to -- not Michael Steele. I mean I could pontificate all day long about what we should do."

As they say in the E.R.: Clear!

Steele went on to say it's the legislators who write the bills, that the 4 a.m., 300-page funny business of an amendment that the Democrats did on Cap & Trade should scare the be-ju-ju (my word not his) out of people, and that in the end, he just wants heath care changed for the better, not changed so the Democrats can say they did it.

"It's going to take a real effort by both parties to come to the table and seriously talk about health care, not just in the abstract, not just in the self-interest of promoting one special interest over another, but in the interest of promoting what's best for the American people."

On that point, Steele is right.