AP distorts Axelrod's comments, Axelrod fires back

Axelrod: Firm on public option

Mike Allen Mike Allen

White House senior adviser David Axelrod tells POLITICO that the administration is not dialing back its support for a public health-insurance option as part of a reform bill, and that a comment he made on NBC’s “Meet the Press” was misinterpreted.

Axelrod told NBC’s David Gregory that President Barack Obama “certainly agrees that we have to have competition and choice, to hold the insurance companies honest. … He believes the public option is a good tool. Now, it shouldn’t define the whole health-care debate, however.”

The Associated Press, which often sets the agenda for how other news organizations cover Sunday shows, popped up a headline saying: “White House shifts on public health care option". The story's lead: "WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's top political adviser is backing away from having a government health care plan compete against private carriers.”

Axelrod disputed that interpretation in an e-mail.

“In no way did I back off our position,” he wrote. “I must have said half a dozen times that he thinks the public option is an important tool to bring about competition and choice that will help consumers. To say that it is not the whole of health insurance reform, in a country where 160 million people have employer-sponsored health insurance and would not even be affected by this, does not mean I am backing off!”

Indeed, Axelrod also told Gregory: “He said there must be an exchange where people can get insurance at a competitive price. He believes in competition and choice. The public option is an important tool to help provoke that where there is no competition. He still believes that. ... So we want to create a pool in which people who don't have insurance, and small businesses, can go and get insurance at a competitive price. And a public option would be a valuable tool within that group, that package of plans that would be offered, private and public.”

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You can stamp your feet and complain about the lying corporate media- you can call Americans stupid -each of which is true, but that's not going to improve the chances of getting responsible health care legislation- or anything else along those lines passed.

As Obama prepares for a Wednesday night speech to Congress in a risky bid to salvage his top domestic priority, political adviser David Axelrod said a public plan is not the core issue in the health care debate. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs danced around a question about whether Obama would veto a bill without the public option.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090906/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_health_care_overhaul