With the White House feeling it "won" the Q&A with House members recently, President Obama used the Super Bowl pre-game yesterday to announce a "health care summit" with Republicans later this month. He also said he rejects Republicans calls to scrap current plans and start from scratch, which means this is really an effort to paint Republicans as obstructionists to a bad deal, and not a sincere effort to include Republican ideas. Further, I believe it's an effort to paint Republicans as having no ideas on health care reform. Republicans should ignore Obama's refusal to start from scratch and have a comprehensive plan of their own.

I still believe the best plan I've ever heard is this one from Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in August. We analyzed it extensively at that time. Perfect? No. A great starting point, yes. Republicans need to be ready with a free market response and make the case that it can meet the same goals than any government plan and do so more efficiently.