This all started in August when Health and Human Services said that the public option was “not the essential element of health care reform.” Within hours anonymous administration officials were walking back Secretary Sebelius’ quote by claiming that “she misspoke.”
A couple weeks later,Robert Gibbs chimed in by claiming that the White House shouldn’t dictate Congress’ decision on a public option. David Axelrod chimed in with a quote referring to the fact that the health care bill will “include the spirit of the public option.” Those two quotes went over so well Axelrod himself was walking it back a mere week later.
Then the President himself didn’t even bother to pick up the phone and lobby Senators on behalf a policy he’s called the “best way to achieve his health care goals.” This has lead Senator Jay Rockefeller, and other progressives, to be baffled at the White House’s actions.
Then Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel, and Valarie Jarret tried bury the public option again 6 weeks later. They were rebuffed health care reform supporters making 300,000 calls to Congress in a single day, and by the fact that 80% of those calls directly asked members of Congress to support a public option.
Now the President told Harry Reid, who of all people was prepared to make a strong stand for the public option in the Senate, not to bother with it because President Senator Olympia Snowe might not like Reid’s policy preferences. And within hours, the White House was yet again walking a disastrous trial balloon aimed at killed the public option back.
There is a pattern here. Five times senior administration officials–four on the record, one as an anonymous quote–have attempted to kill the public option. And five times they’ve been forced to walk it back for two simple reasons: first, the public option is good public policy; second, the public option is supported by 60 to 65 percent of the American public, and even picks up significant support from rank-and-file Republicans.
I hope that one day soon the administration will realize that opposing 2/3rds of the public on a key issue in order to not upset powerful politicians and special interests is bad politics. I hope they will stop banging their head against the wall, and realize that serving the President means fighting to include his best interests in the final legislation. A strong public option is in the President’s best interests. Simply put, Americans are tired of being squeezed while the powers that be party as if nothing ever happened.
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it’s so discouraging.
Very good to have all this in timeline style. If anyone has any other examples that can be added in, would be good to have them too, along with a link.
Great idea, bag–recommended.
Like Jane said yesterday, it’s a code: Wavering Democrats understand that the truth is what the White House says first, and the walk-back is just to extinguish the resulting fire among the base.
I do not understand this. The public option was Obama’s freaking idea.
Visit the boycott of donations until this matter is settled.
Joined the boycott. Trying to get a corrupt and ossified political system to do the right thing is like pushing a chain up hill.
GOOD MORN
TRIGGER OUR DONATIONS
after we get medicare plus 5
we can play the SAME game………….HARDBALL
mofos
perfect word
murderers come to mind also
They’re talking about Opt-Out again in the Senate and I keep wondering, what’s the bait and switch going to be this time?
Well the Washington Post reports today that said public option “would likely be administered by a private insurance provider.” So there it is–but do they really think people are that dumb?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102304081.html?hpid=topnews
Wapo:
Jinks, bmull.
They don’t care what people think or what their intelligence might be. The American public is nothing more than a “market” for the corporatists and plutocrats.
Looks like folks are waking up though. I’d hate to be the dem to bring this down…
Even Mary Landrieu is coming along:
“Manley said Reid would spend the weekend canvassing Democrats on the opt-out idea”
Sounds like a light weekend, considering there are only 1-2 holdouts, according to reports. I wonder if he will expense the food and golf.
Actually, Sebelius was right to say that the public option was “not the essential element of health care reform.” It is the ONLY element. With a robust, affordable, subsidized for the poor, open-to-all public option, the insurance companies can just go on raising rates and denying care all they want- everyone will switch to the public option, they will go out of business, and we will wind up with single-payer, which is what we needed in the first place. Not that this will happen, unfortunately.
Here’s what I bet will happen, using good ol’ Alabama as an example:
Right now there’s just BCBS of Alabama with 89% market share.
The “public option” will come on the scene, but it will be administered by BCBS. So will the PO-by-BCBS “compete” with BCBS?
On second thought, I bet Alabama will just Opt Out.
[Emphasis supplied]
I think you are both wrong.
Problem is, it won’t be open to everyone. Only small businesses and individuals. At least for now.
Well, what’s the point of that?
Acrually, the public option was the brainchild of Jacob Hacker http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/04/news/economy/public_option_hacker.fortune/index.htm
and Hacker’s idea was first picked up by John Edwards http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/the_evolution_of_the_public_op.html
Obama was relatively late to the health care ‘Ive got a plan’ party….remember when he, as well as other Democratic Presidentail candiadtes apppeared in Nevada for a forum well before any primary and he had no plan to speak of at all?
His ‘plan’ has been fed to him by health insurance isiders from the day they put his plan – finally – up on his campaign website.
True, but I refuse to consider that a real public option. And we may not even get that. What we need is single-payer, just like most of the rest of the Western world.
Obama’s plan today is almost the exact opposite of what it was during the campaign.
Obama isn’t tying to kill the public option. He just wants to tone it down a bit and make it more acceptable to all. Rahm is guiding the ship so we should be ok.
Obama’s only goal is to keep Republican gains from being rolled back. He’s more than happy to enable Repubican wars, whether they are wars overseas or the war on the Constitution or the war on the middle class or the war on the New Deal.
NOTHING he has done can in any sense be seen as a rollback of any of the Repubicans’ gains under George Bush.
What does it mean that he was the best the Dems could offer? Edwards/Clinton were not the answer….with the necessity to be electable?
The majority in Congress, the Pres, whomever that may be, and the majority of the SCOTUS, are all happy to fund whatever program (including war) will get public money into the hands of the large corps. The aforementioned do not want any real competition for those dollars. obama is just one of the “old boys” working on ways to make the theft more palatable. The “bipartisanship” the wh is working so hard to achieve is just to give cover to DINOs such as landrieu, bayh, etc. If obama had really wanted to do the right thing for the country, he would have put out a real plan and fought for it. As it is, we got some vague mentions of a “public option” with no definition and leadership. Our “leaders” took away any thoughts of single payer while thinking no one would notice or see any problem, just as these “leaders” thought that “impeachment is off the table” and “i want to look ahead, not behind” would be reassuring.
If Landrieu is coming along then there is a plan a foot to sabotage or delute (again) the entire thing down the line and they all know it.
The corporate powers will get what they want. Just look at the stories of death and illness caused by them. Our government is doing NOTHING about the murder by spreadsheet that is going on now.
Who will die next? It could be someone you love.
I know everyone here knows this. Just had to say it.
Let’s see first he tried to use the Blue Dogs to do in the PO, then there were co-ops, triggers, opt outs, and now triggers again. This is like a comedy movie where the husband tries to kill the wife in numerous ways, and the wife remains totally oblivious: cyanide, the car blows up, the house burns down, the boat sinks. Only in this story, Obama is the husband and the wife is us and our health.
Indeed, it is difficult to reconcile the false with the true.
It’s funny watching people try, though.
Looks like fdl people have a bad case of ODS. Hopefully that’ll be covered by the public option plan as well.
WTF does Obama want in terms of bipartisanship. 20% of Republican voters favor a PO, thus the PO does have a bipartisan support. So, pass the PO with a strong bipartisan mandate from the people. Obama, is just another Cocksucker.
I see zero evidence the White House has ever tried to kill the public option – you’ve just collected some evidence that they’re trying to shore up some fallback options for a trigger in the worst case scenario that the bill falls apart. Given that we’re a few votes away from a public option in both houses, that’s obviously plan A and is what is likely to happen in the natural course of events. I want Obama to put his thumb on the scale of Nelson, Bayh, or whoever, and I believe he is doing this – privately. I don’t want him waving a veto pen in public – I want him to be able to sign a bill.
There is so much disinformation floated about the public option, I simply have to succumb to confusion. News, and even websites like Politico, are engaged in trying to sway congressional members with so-called ‘insider reports’ as to its life or death or being on life support or being ‘robust’; or that the president is against it or for it or unconcerned. I’m not sure anyone can really predict what is going to happen.
Obama wants to give the health care profit pimps what they want, I believe he is using Sen.Snow as a smoke screen. Teddy must be rolling over in his grave.
If anyone here has Photoshop skills, I think we need an image that combines the “giving comfort to the enemy” quote from the AHIP lobbyist with pictures of the enemy: the baby who is too big for health insurance and the toddler who is too little for health insurance. That would be a very strong message for us to spread around.
Digby beat me to it! video But I think we need an image, too, besides this video.
Obama wants a trigger for the public option. He thinks the insurance industry needs a few more years to rape the American people. Send Dems a message in the next two elections – vote 3rd party!
that’s snark, right?
I agree. He will argue that the only thing he could get passed was the watered-down “trigger” thing because he needed Senator Snowe’s vote. What a crock!
I cannot believe how many people buy this tripe about Obama working against the public option. There is zero evidence that he is doing that. None. The claims being made here are the result of folks putting their own doomsday interpretations on things and putting stock in a few unsourced rumors from God-knows-who. People on right-wing blogs say a lot of crazy stuff, but the same thing happens around here too.
Obama has consistently said he is for the public option. He has never said he is not. Just because he does not wrap himself in the flag and jump off a cliff, that does not mean he is working against the public option. Rather, he is a whole lot smarter about politics than are most folks on the internet, and is arranging to get one. This is not some TV-show where everything is resolved at the end of the hour, it is complicated political reality, and what matters is what happens in the end. Right now, he is just trying to get bills out of the House and Senate with him looking neutral so he can get what he wants in Conference. That is what he said he was gonna do, and it is exactly what he is doing.
Let’s take the fight to Snowe’s backyard:
http://www.actblue.com/page/obamafight
and of course, Susan Collins isn’t mentioned, but her complicity won’t be lost on any Maine voters. And Maine is a tiny, inexpensive media market, so this ad could run 100 times for what it costs Bloomberg to run a single spot in the Big Apple.
Maine went 58 to 40 for Obama. FIFTY-EIGHT TO FORTY! If Maine had, as they should have, two progressive senators, this whole fight would have been over in early summer. It’s time for Maine to wake up and clean house.
Aren’t we glad now that we elected a moderate Republican instead of an FDR-type Democrat or that pair of right wingnuts.
It’s deeply mysterious. Really. The Republican Party is weak and vulnerable. The voters overwhelmingly support the public option. Obama could make a sound policy choice, earn unwavering loyalty from his base and gratitude from almost everyone else, he could go down in history as a hero, and instead, he is choosing to throw it all away. For AHIP. And PHrmA. WTF? I mean really. WTF?
Did ya ever stop to think that what He see’s they are about to pass is really a shit job, and wants to take some credit for it, but not be blamed for pushing it to hard.
He may be way smarter than we are, and see’s what we don’t.
60% support a public option, maybe, but even more support single-payer or medicare-for-all. As was made plainly at the outset of Obama’s administration, the latter was off the table. In other words, what most people want in health care reform has never matter to the White House nor Congress.
Look if Obama wanted a public option he could get one. The public is clearly behind it and the house is wanting it. I dont believe for one minute Obama wants this. His silence on the issue speaks volumes. He is a political pussy and it is quite disgusting. This isnt what we were sold. This isnt the man we all thought we were putting in the WHite House. It was all show. All lies. There is no defending his pathetic handling of this, the Wall Street debacle…in fact everything he is doing is slanted toward business and industry lobbyists we might as well have put a couple dumb ass republicans in office. At least we wouldnt have to watch our man fuck this all up so bad.