Obama Surrenders on Health Care

Over the weekend, the Obama Administration waved the white flag on the public option for health care.

He got rolled by industry, and by the crazies who showed up at the town hall meetings.

If they were going to call him a socialist anyway, he should have pushed for single-payer. Instead, he proposed an inferior public option. And even on that, he refused to hold his ground and insist that he would veto any health reform bill that didn’t offer such an option.

As a result, tens of millions of people may be forced to buy private health insurance, or they’ll be fined for not doing so. No wonder the insurance industry is rubbing its hands together.

Rather than Medicare for all, Obama is actually slicing into the Medicare and Medicaid budgets for cost-cutting purposes, though he refused to do the most effective thing to reduce costs under Medicare, which is to demand the right to bargain for drug discounts with the pharmaceuticals.

He sold us out on that one even before the debate started.

Make no mistake: The American people are losing, and the insurance companies and drug companies are winning.

This is the consequence of not taking a principled stand.

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http://www.progressive.org/node/135501

"Rahm Emanuel notoriously told The New York Times earlier this year, “The only nonnegotiable principle here,” he said, “is success. Everything else is negotiable.”

But success is not a principle. It’s an outcome. And by surrendering the principle of Medicare for all at the outset, and by surrendering the right to negotiate drug prices, and now by surrendering even a meager public option, Obama has defined success downward."



Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

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If true, what poor counsel Obama is getting/taking.

I'm really beginning to be concerned about the Emanuel brothers....

even as candidate Obama. It is more bussiness as usual than a white flag. The question will be whether Democrats/Progressives/Lefters can accept this or will will desert his Presidency and the Core of the Democratic Party.

In a two party system, the only way to tell the party it screwed up is to make them loose and take away their power. But the alternative stinks, but only if you can find a big difference between the two.

But, I don't want to say what they are.
In October or whenever it is a done deal, I'll list the reasons.