Obama Still Prefers Public Option, White House Says - USA Today

Obama still prefers public option, White House says
Posted by David Jackson
Aug 18, 2009

<snip>

The White House wants to make something perfectly clear: The public option is still on the health care negotiating table.

"The goal is choice and competition" among health insurance plans, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters this morning."The preference is the public option."

Gibbs denounced reports that the administration may drop its support for a publicly funded insurance option because of intense opposition. He attributed the reports to a media "overreaction" after the comment by Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that a public option is not "essential" to a health care plan.

Obama himself stoked commentary with his statement Saturday that "the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."

Whether the White House was sending signals or not, liberal Democrats made their own position very clear: The public option is essential to any health care plan designed to cover all Americans.

Yet Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., says there aren't the votes for it in the Senate. Republicans and some conservative Democrats describe the public option as a gateway to a government-run, single-payer plan.

Bottom line: It's tough to negotiate a complex piece of legislation in public. The administration obviously doesn't want to deal through the media or drop a key provision before Congress returns from August recess.

To be continued.

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Link: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/08/68497191/1?loc=interstitialskip

:banghead:

:crazy:

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

I guess. :shrug:

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6336043

right before I posted this one here.

And now my head hurts.

:hangover:

As in, "We refuse to negotiate the public option away." It is past time for a line in the sand. My hope is that Obama intends to make this a line in the sand and is just waiting til Baucus' committee get a bill voted out to show his hand. But I am skeptical.

Frankly, we got a marshmellow here, a great speaker and an intelligent guy, but not one who will lead, but be lead instead. I'm disappointed right now. I pray he proves me wrong.

Prefers?

That means ... "I will settle for less."

That is unacceptable. Here's what the Progressive Caucus has to say about that:



http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/sixty-house-liberals-to-white-house-no-public-option-no-health-care-reform/

No robust public option = no "insurance reform" bill. The Administration needs to hear this message loudly and clearly.

:dem:

-Laelth

Ummmm....:eyes:

Void where prohibited. Restrictions apply. In the event that an erection persists longer than 4 hours, seek immediate medical attention.

It is up to the Congress and the Senate to get him a good bill.

If it was just "up to congress" then he wouldn't be about campaigning as hard as he is. The problem is, how he's campaigning is ineffective. He needs to tell the American people specifically what health care reform looks like to him, what kind of a bill he would and wouldn't support - and he needs to go beyond vagueness like "it must keep costs down."

It's precisely his hands off attitude, leaving it all to congress, refusing to layout a framework of specifics that the President say were must haves for signing - its that vagueness that has opened the door to all of the speculative bullshit that is bringing down the health care debate.

One of the biggest problems with the health care reform fight right now is that Obama isn't leading. This whole let Congress sort it out thing isn't working and is nothing more than an overcompensation for the mistakes of 1993-94. Obama is undercutting his own effectiveness even while working very, very hard to be on the campaign trail for healthcare, by never using any of those opportunties to nail down specifics in the public's mind of what Obama signed legislation on health care must look like.... because he won't do that, the idiots have filled that vaccum with their own nonesense, and people are much more likely to believe it - because no ones given them anything specific about what "Obama's health plan" looks like. That's because there currently IS NO PLAN, thanks to the white house's wait-and-see approach to health care.

He's the President for fucks sake, and he hasn't committed to a single specific thing on health care. "Must keep costs down" is vague. "Must be affordable" is really goddamn vague.

He needs to say, a public option is the minimum I could accept and sign a health care reform bill into law.

Remember, public option isn't the "whole pie." Single Payer was the whole pie and public option is the absolute bare bones compromise - as much compromise as you can give before you don't have have a health care reform anymore, you have insurance reform.

bills.

i direct anger at them, obama does not write or vote on the bills.

the administration's role in its own policy initiatives should always be analyzed and, when necessary, questioned just as congress's role in writing the actual bills should be analyzed and questioned.

There's plenty of mishandling to go around here.

negotiating point. There is not reform without it. He has to be out there telling congress that it's not bargaining anything. Right not it seems like the House is behind us, not public option, no bill at all.