Obama said just now " I have never said I was in favor of a single payer pan"

True or false?

good try though...

:P

:P

:D

:rofl:

but as it is, we need something more incremental

But that would not fit your fantasy, now would it?

:hi:

Seriously. You can't have an incremental change towards a goal without having a goal to change to.

Just what do you think the incremental is towards?

This is hair splitting like supporting civil unions but being against gay marriage. I can understanding that position as a compromise to head off gay marriage but under equality reasoning? not so much.

One gives you more options than the other.

Taiwaan is an example of the drydock side of the analogy.

way that that could be done.

There would be chaos, massive layoffs in the health insurance industry, (I might like THAT part), and if you think the town halls are turning violent, imagine what we'd be seeing if all 300,000,000 people had to enroll in one day, week, or month. Even i the IRS takes months to sort through about a hundred fifty million taxpayer's tax forms.

Thats your take?

BTW, expanding Medicare to cover more people is far more "incremental" that establishing a brand new government bureaucracy for the "public option".

Since running for President? TRUE

Prior to running for office? FALSE

Now they're going to make a big deal about HE LIED!

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/19/obama-touts-single-payer-system/

If anything, our President means he never said he'd start the system over from scratch?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE

He said a long time ago that he was in favor of it, but not recently.

But I think he was "never for single payer" in relation to after his decision to accept health care money when he first ran for the Senate.

I really dont appreciate his easy dismissal of single payer due to it being "disruptive".

Thats just a dodge to excuse his half baked attempt to "reform" health care while maintaining the same status quo that is the heart of the problem.

to raise large sums of money off the current system.

http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-in-03-id-like-to-see-a-single-payer-health-care-plan/

Obama says it here.

With no qualifications.

in 2007 and 2008. A quote from 2003? When he wasn't even in a position to affect change on that level? It's a stretch.

He clearly *was* in favor single payer, before he was against it. Or found it "disruptive."

the point is, power has corroded Mr. Obama's "progressivism." Just a tad.

at least with the current plan, Obama and team can rightfully counter the "Canadian socialized health care" canard with the truth about people keeping their private insurance.

I think you and your purity types are a big reason we kept losing elections.

the Democrats are perceived as having no backbone, and failing to stand up for any real change...

and it is continuing to happen, but since it isn't happening to the extent YOU want...then it isn't happening. Buncha fucking whiners.

n/t

Writes the legislation....

Dictates the dialogue

And, the people just go along with it.

Such good little Germans

sometimes we tend to nit pick to what we wanna hear, there is nothing different from that video
to what he has always said, which is, HE IS FOR SINGLE PAYER, but its going to take a while to
get it.

People just tend to ignore the obvious...

I know we're not GW Bush lemmings who will swallow whole anything fed to us, but there is a point at which healthy skepticism bleeds over into unmitigated cynicism and obstruction.

And you should not defend a lie.

but he can't say that and hope to get any progress on what is being worked on right now. you guys are pathetic. willfully stupid. Too fucking bad McCain and "Death Panel" Palin aren't running things instead.

I'll say it again. You "single payer" purists are stupid, stupid, stupid.

well why didn't you say so Rahm, it could have been easier on all of us...:rofl:

It IS a lie for Obama to have said that he was never in favor of single payer. You , and I both know that is not the case, (unless you are of the mind that Obama was lying back then. )

c'mon now Pretz.....

stretched to the point of a lie.

After all, Al Gore was talking about Saddam's WMDs in 1992 too...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVFYcxLiRGk&feature=PlayList&p=7EDACBA01D4E225D&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=43

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JE48XHKG64
(Al's full speech, unfettered by any commentary)

are down right scary and insane

the video is whats important, those jackasses that are being paid to go to blogs and
disrupt does not phase me one nano second.

..made one statement back in 2003 saying "if starting from scratch..."

I typed out the question as I was listening to his Town Hall on C-span right now.
( It will prolly be replayed)

It has been claimed that DURING HIS CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT
he said he was in favor of "single payer".

My question on this thread is:

does anyone remember that ?
better yet, has anyone a link to a quote during the campaign.?

edit to add word.

here; http://www.breitbart.tv/obama-in-03-id-like-to-see-a-single-payer-health-care-plan/

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

but the question is, has he ever been for single payer?? that was the question... no? yes?

and you're being willfully ignorant/blind because you want your pound of flesh from Obama on some idealistic principled point.

quarter pounder will do it....:P

DURING HIS

************PRESIDENTIAL ***************

CAMPAIGN.

When he was a state senator, he said he favored single payor. I saw the video. Doesn't he realize all this stuff is on video?

Do you realize this thread is bogus?

he has said he is NOT in favor of it... including dozens of times on the campaign trail during an 18 month Presidential run.


If you came into this year thinking that Obama was for Single Payer, then you're a fucking idiot or you've been asleep for 6 years.

but given that we already have a system, he's in favor of different reform.

David

I am so confused. Does that mean only one person gets to cook babies and grammas for the death panel at a time?

Here...have an "L".

A chicken in every pot, perhaps, but you must provide your own pot!

No wonder there is so much confusion from the other side, we are confused on our own side.

Obviously he isn't explaining himself very well and getting a single coherent message out.

doesn't he understand?

The Obama administration has completely and utterly fumbled the health care debate that I happen to support them on. Their message people need to be fired and they really SHOULD start from scratch with explaining this, but I unfortunately think it's too late for that.

but here we are

people can't grasp ideas...it has to be limited to Yes or No, and obviously has to be repeated ad nauseam so every one can catch up.

That's only fair. That's how we do it at work. And if there is any left over we offer it to the others.

you gotto be kiddin, me eat left overs.....you're mad...:evilgrin:

In fact, I don't remember him talking about pans at all.

During the presidential campaign he never said he was in favor of a single payer plan. I think what he ran on when he ran for president is what is relevant here.

He did say in a town hall 3 years BEFORE running that if they started from scratch and if they had both houses. We aren't starting from scratch even though they have both houses.

even relevant to the conversation. Obama did not run on single payer and never supported it on the national stage. I'm also unclear on the focus for a system that probably doesn't have 10 votes in the Senate and like 90 tops in the House.

Sure, with expending all political capital he could get near a plurality in the House and maybe 35 votes in the Senate but since that won't pass shit either then why all the hand wringing and emotion. I'd love to see it happen to but the support is fucking flimsy in the general population and non-existent in the policy making arena.

You get me some consistent polls that show majority support for dismantling private for profit insurance and I'll say you have a grassroots groundswell for this but if you can't and you can't show me the votes then you are being a stooge for the status quo. Yes, single payer covers everyone. Yes, single payer could work with the money in the system or likely less. Yes, single payer is something that we need to move to in order to control the rate of growth of medical as part of the big pie but their is no real stomach for it in either the public (despite some polls) and entrenched will against it in the legislature.

Again, give me all the polls you like showing public favor but until you can demonstrate the will to kill the insurance industry as it exists today and the acceptance that all current plans are going the way of the dodo then you might as well show me a Zogby or something because the questions being asked don't stand up against the noise machine at all. The only thing I believe is there is a clear majority that favors doing something different if it doesn't cost them anything, including comfort zone.

Obama is pushing for something barely in reach as is. 99% of the time before the last year we would have been doing cartwheels over some regulation. BEING RIGHT ISN'T ENOUGH.
You still have to play your hand and bluffing is of very negligible because the guy you're sitting across from can see most or even all of your cards.

They fucking know how many votes we have and have a good idea of the ones that are persuadable and you're not thinking clearly if you miss this. Obama took the most aggressive course of action plausible and has run for two national offices without promising any more than that. Why are you so fiercely holding on to a single old comment but quick to dismiss the plethora of subsequent statements.

If by "never" you mean never in his lifetime, it is a false statement. If by "never", you mean within the time that he started working on health care reform as President than it is a true statement.

Long ago

Once

In 2003...

That is not never.

Wouldn't you feel kind of petty and stupid if you got up and said "But Mr. President, when you were 12 years old you wrote an essay about how we should have Single Payer!" If that were the case he would've also been wrong to use the word "never" without qualifying it as "never in my adult life". In this case he did more or less the same thing by not qualifying it with "never during my Presidency".

People use the word "never" in colloquial speech in the context that Obama did all of the time. I don't think the intent was to deceive anybody, I think the intent was to make it clear that as President he has not supported Single-Payer.

I think he came to realize that it would be impossible to pass when in the Congress. What one says before politics normally changes when you are embroiled in the political climate, for many situations. And when it comes to universal health care he would never have been able to fully distinguish himself with that. He'd either turn into another Kucinich--which would never win a Presidential Democratic ticket or Presidency because of the "other side." Not that Kucinich isn't the shizzite and know what he's talking about---because I agree with him 90% of the time; but because the nation will see him as 150% radical if they saw Obama has 100% radical.

in the current political climate there's no fucking way we'd get it. You think they're screaming NOW? Can you imagine if all the versions of the bill were single-payer?

So he is in favor of single-payer--in the sense that if he was building a system from the ground up, that's what he'd make it. But we've got an entrenched system here, albeit a shitty one.

is that he was in favor of Universal Health Care, but it would take many steps to get there. In other words, now, in this current reality..he has never been in favor of single-payer. Difficult I know. Since True or False is the only answer that is acceptable.. I say True.