While most people don’t think of health care reform when considering how to better the region’s economic status, two local lawmakers said Wednesday that’s one of the keys to improving the quality of life.

The regional economic summit, “Giving Voice to Our Region,” which concluded Wednesday at Northeastern State University, focused on making northeastern Oklahoma more competitive and, as a result, more successful in attracting businesses and quality jobs.

A wide range of speakers discussed working across geographical, political and party bounds to accomplish that goal. The conference was sponsored by NSU, the Cherokee Nation, and SACC-EZ (Sequoyah, Adair and Cherokee County Empowerment Zone).

But with health care one of the top national issues concerning Americans, it also was on the minds of people attending the summit, and speakers at the legislative breakfast Wednesday morning.

U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., and U.S. Rep. John Sullivan, R-Okla., appeared by teleconference from Washington, D.C., where much of their attention for the next week will focus on the House version of health care reform.

Both backpedaled rapidly from the Democrat version House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues announced last week, saying they would not support it.

During their presentation, Sullivan and Boren stressed how closely the Oklahoma delegation works together, with Boren the lone Democrat among its seven members.

“I joke about being the dean of the Oklahoma House delegation,” Boren quipped. “It’s a pretty small group. I look at the mirror and talk to myself.”

Boren and Sullivan agreed a bipartisan effort for health care reform, as well as addressing other national issues, is best. But in today’s political climate, they doubt that can occur.

“When I go back to Oklahoma, I don’t find too many people who care for the government takeover of our health care,” Sullivan said. “We need to reform our health system; we need to get costs down.”

He said the current proposal would cost small businesses $838 billion.

“This is not a way to grow an economy,” he said. “We’re pretty much agreed that we need to do this, but do it a different way.”

Sullivan said he has introduced an amendment to make the House bill better. It would require, in six months, an accounting of fraud, duplication of services and abuse, and their elimination.

Boren concurred, saying he expected the House bill to pass by Tuesday, without his, or Sullivan’s, vote in favor.