Last week, news mediums all over the country reported that President Obama had called for a bipartisan summit on health care reform. The president is making an effort to bridge the ever-growing gap between Republicans and Democrats and resolve one of the most pressing matters facing Congress today.

Sounds great, right? The Republicans didn’t think so.

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio told Fox News that he questioned the president’s “sincerity,” and wondered if the president would be willing to “start over,” in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Now I can understand that the Republicans want to make sure that their points are included in any health care reform bill, but start over? The first versions of the bills were due around the holidays, and now it’s mid-February. To start over now would just be another set back in the long list of thing the president and the Democrats have been trying to pass.

The Republican’s got to see government mandated health care first hand as the Republican National Committee met in lush Hawaii in January. Hawaii is one of the states that has already adopted universal health care, along with Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Hawaii adopted their health care system with the Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Act, which took effect in 1975. This means that the citizens of Hawaii have had universal health care for 35 years, and Republicans keep insisting government mandated health care won’t work?

The Democrats could just as easily use their considerable majority to pass a health care bill without any Republican votes. In the Fox News article, Republicans said “Obama runs the risk of appearing insincere if he convenes the bipartisan gathering without showing greater willingness to shelve or greatly change his party’s proposals.”

Basically, the Republicans are saying they don’t to play nice if the Democrats aren’t going change their beliefs to what the Republicans want.

I’m 20 years old and unlike most people my age, I’m not in the best of health. I’ve been suffering from kidney stones for the last 14 years, and while they’re not life threatening, they are a major health problem. In the last 2 years, I’ve been to emergency room twice, and without insurance, I racked up quite a bill.

Like millions of other men, women, and children, I can’t afford high-priced health insurance, so a universal health care system is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Congress needs to stop and think about what their bickering is doing to the people of this country. The longer they fight, the more and more people go through every day without health insurance. For some this is merely an inconvenience, but for others, it can mean the difference between life and death, as well as mounting debt.

Everyone deserves to be healthy and no amount of selfishness and interest groups will ever stop that. At least, I hope so.