When President Obama opened today’s summit on health care reform at the White House, he said:

In this effort, every voice has to be heard. Every idea must be considered.

Of course, he spoke those words to a room that contained not a single advocate of free‐​market health care reform.

• No one from the American Enterprise Institute (ranked the #5 think tank in the world for health policy)
• No one from the Cato Institute (ranked #7)
• No one from the National Center for Policy Analysis (ranked #10)
• No one from the Manhattan Institute
• No one from the Pacific Research Institute
• No one from the Galen Institute
• No one from the Heritage Foundation
• The list goes on…

Obama did, however, invite people from left‐​wing think tanks, including avowed advocates of socialized medicine. That makes Obama’s pledge of openness a farce, and today’s event a charade.


Or as my colleague Wayne Crews puts it: it’s a ditch, not a summit.