The GabFest is sponsored by Audible, the Internet's leading provider of spoken audio entertainment.

GabFest listeners can download a free audiobook by signing up for an Audible membership at Audiblepodcast.com slash gabfest.

Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for the 12th of June Friday.

I'm John Dickerson here with David Plotz.

Emily Bazelon is not here in Washington, but in New Haven.

We're going to talk about health care reform, the Republican Party and its woes.

Then we're going to finally end with the

hysterical tale of the Republican takeover of the New York State Senate. David, health care,

you are rightfully suspicious of the reach of government. What are your views about the fact that

we're going to, that the president's offering a plan that will insure 46 to 50 million uninsured and yet not change the kind of health care, those who do have health care receive at the moment?

Well, you confuse me, John.

You say the president is offering a plan.

The president does not seem to be offering a plan.

There seems to be Senate negotiation and House negotiation about

what a possible plan, which will do some of these things, will be. And apparently, you know,

they have kicked down the road, I don't know how far down the road they can kick it, the question

of what the actual mechanism for getting those people insured will be.

So they've had lots of nice discussions about the ways in which they're going to save,

have cost savings and improve medical delivery, and that's going to be one component of whatever the health care reform is.

But the other two components, namely how do you fund this and, you know, what is the so-called public option seem to be not at all grappled with.

And the, you know, you have a left wing of the Democratic Party significant, you know, I didn't mean that pejoratively, a large group on the left of the Democrats who think there needs to be a strong public option. And then you have a significant group of Republicans who think there can be

no public option at all because that will, you know, harm health care competition and ruin competitiveness.

...