In pressuring the most liberal Democratic congressmen to vote for the health reform bill that passed the House on Sunday, President Obama soothed their misgivings about its lack of a government-run “public option” by assuring them, “This is a foundation.”
The president added that the tens of millions of people newly covered means “it’s a beginning” toward such a public option that would compete with private insurance.
Obama kisses up to the moderates to get his first bill through, now he will try and change it to add a public option
The revelation comes from a long investigative piece by Ceci Connolly in Tuesday’s Washington Post. The key to passage of Obamacare in the House on Sunday, according to Connolly, “was the personal touch – in carefully-tailored appeals” from Obama “in the closing days.”
Telling the story of one of those presidential appeals, she reports that “Some fence-sitters nearly drowned in presidential attention,” and on March 4 “Obama faced a group of disappointed liberals, many of them supporters of a single-payer, government-run system. They had such high hopes that he would stick to his promise to create a public insurance option,” according to Connolly’s account.
“‘This is a foundation,’ he told them. ‘Thirty-one million Americans will be covered under this. It’s a beginning.’” the Post quotes the president telling the lawmakers who favored European-style socialized medicine, among them Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who ultimately switched and voted with the president in favor of the Senate bill.
Read More: By Theodore Kettle, Newsmax
Tags: Barack Obama, not dead yet, Public Option
Liberal Senators love Reids “compromise”
The unexpected new proposal for breaking the impasse over the so-called public option won President Barack Obama’s endorsement Wednesday and sent hopes surging among a wide array of Democrats that the way may be clearing to pass their massive Senate health care bill by Christmas.
The deal, which emerged late Tuesday night after days of secret negotiations, would eliminate the new government-run insurance plan that many liberals had seen as the linchpin of meaningful reform.
But paradoxically, what lies at the heart of the compromise may be a more durable, if initially smaller, form of the public option: an expansion of Medicare, the huge federal health insurance program for seniors, to include millions of Americans ages 55 through 64.
And by enlarging Medicare eligibility, the compromise could sharply expand the base of political support, giving ordinary Americans a concrete stake in what many may have seen as a distant battle among drug companies, doctors and other interests.
Read More: Chicago Tribune
Tags: Compromise, Harry Reid, Obamacare, Public Option, SenateThe UK Daily Mail
Barack Obama’s plans to reform American healthcare been dealt a massive blow after Democrats in the Senate appear to have dropped plans for an NHS-style insurance scheme in the U.S.
Plans for the government-run health insurance scheme seem to have been dropped last night in a bid to ease reform through Washington.
Under a deal stuck late yesterday, the so-called public option part of proposed legislation was jettisoned, in favour of a non-profit private alternative overseen by a federal agency.
Mr Obama’s hopes for a public option dominated domestic politics in America over the summer, turning healthcare into a massive priority – almost bigger than the economy.
His popularity plunged over the issue as violence broke out in town hall meetings across the country on the subject.
The compromise will disappoint advocates of having a government-run scheme in place to compete with insurers and drive down costs.
Tags: Barack Obama, Dropped from Bill, Healthcare reform, Public OptionHouse Democrats reached agreement Wednesday on key elements of a health care bill that would vastly alter America’s medical landscape, requiring virtually universal sign-ups and establishing a new government-run insurance option for millions.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned a formal announcement Thursday morning, but details were still being finalized, lawmakers and aides said. Officials said the legislation could be up for a vote on the House floor next week.
Pelosi pushes a more liberal version of Obamacare forward
The rollout would cap months of arduous negotiations to bridge differences between liberal and moderate Democrats and blend health care overhaul bills passed by three separate committees over the summer. The developments in the House came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., tried to round up support among moderate Democrats for his bill, which includes a modified government insurance option that states could opt out of.
Reid met Thursday with Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who faces a potentially tough re-election next year.
Read More: By ERICA WERNER, AP
Tags: Liberal Bill, Nancy Pelosi, Obamacare, Public OptionSenior White House adviser David Axelrod said President Obama is “not willing to accept” that a so-called public option “is not going to be in the final package” of health-care legislation on “Face the Nation” Sunday.
“He continues to believe it’s a good idea,” Axelrod told CBS News Chief Washington correspondent and “Face the Nation” anchor Bob Schieffer about a government-funded alternative to private health insurance. “He continues to advocate it, and I’m not willing to accept that it’s not going to be in the final package.”
Axelrod said the president “believes that it will add an element of competition where there is none in some places in this country where there’s a monopolistic situation with insurance companies.”
Read More: By Michelle Levi, CBS News
Tags: Barack Obama, Healthcare reform, Obamacare, Public OptionPresident Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority.
Administration officials insisted that they have not shied away from their support for a public option to compete with private insurance companies, an idea they said Obama still prefers to see in a final bill.
But at a time when the president had hoped to be selling middle-class voters on how insurance reforms would benefit them, the White House instead finds itself mired in a Democratic Party feud over an issue it never intended to spotlight.
Obama is surprised people object to more socialism
"I don’t understand why the left of the left has decided that this is their Waterloo," said a senior White House adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We’ve gotten to this point where health care on the left is determined by the breadth of the public option. I don’t understand how that has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."
"It’s a mystifying thing," he added. "We’re forgetting why we are in this."
Another top aide expressed chagrin that a single element in the president’s sprawling health-care initiative has become a litmus test for whether the administration is serious about the issue.
Read More: By Michael D. Shear and Ceci Connolly, Washington Post
Tags: Barack Obama, Caught off guard, Public Option, Socialism“UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.” — Barack Obama, Aug. 11, 2009
No institution has been the butt of more government- inefficiency jokes than the U.S. Postal Service. Maybe the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The only way the post office can stay in business is its government subsidy. The USPS lost $2.4 billion in the quarter ended in June and projects a net loss of $7 billion in fiscal 2009, outstanding debt of more than $10 billion and a cash shortfall of $1 billion. It was moved to intensive care — the Government Accountability Office’s list of “high risk” cases – - last month and told to shape up. (It must be the only entity that hasn’t cashed in on TARP!)
Obama’s model for efficiency is the Post Office
That didn’t stop President Barack Obama from holding up the post office as an example at a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, last week.
When Obama compared the post office to UPS and FedEx, he was clearly hoping to assuage voter concerns about a public health-care option undercutting and eliminating private insurance.
What he did instead was conjure up visions of long lines and interminable waits. Why do we need or want a health-care system that works like the post office?
Read More: By Caroline Baum, Bloomberg
Tags: Healthcare, Obama's model for efficiency, Post Office, Public OptionWhite House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took issue with reporters’ questions tonight about whether the president has signaled a shift in his support for a public insurance option.
Gibbs insisted “nothing has changed” in the president’s position, despite Obama’s remark on Saturday that the public option “is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it.”
“The goals are choice and competition. His preference is a public option. If there are other ideas, he’s happy to look at them,” Gibbs said in a briefing on Air Force One en route back to Washington.
Gibbs said there has been a “boring consistency” to the White House’s rhetoric on health care and challenged reporters to go back and look at the record. He turned the reporters’ questions into an opportunity to question the media coverage, saying it is “one of the more curious things” he’s seen.
Read More: By Karen Travers, ABCNEWS
Tags: Barack Obama, Flip Flop, Public OptionThere was startling news out of the Obama camp over the weekend as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on a Sunday talk show appeared to back away from the so-called public option being vital to their heath care plan. Sebelius said it was “not the essential element” of Obamacare.
Are they really backing away from the crown jewel of the Democrats’ statist plan: government-run heath care?
Not so fast.The most important part of the Obama administration sales pitch on their “public option” has been to increase competition so price would come down. That’s what they tell us. Yet if that were really the aim of Democrats, they would break down the barriers that would allow the purchase of heath insurance across state lines, like your car insurance options.
While making the Sunday rounds, these three back away from the Public Option
Democrats aren’t really interested in thousands of health insurance choices. What they are interested in is control of every health care dollar spent in this country. Instead of offering tax credits to the poor to purchase their own health insurance and making health insurance tax deductible for workers, Democrats have been demanding a “public option” that facilitates a government takeover of the entire heath care economy.
Watch what Democrats do, not what they say.
Read More: by Connie Hair, Human Events
Tags: Backing away, Barack Obama, Healthcare reform, Obamacare, Public OptionAs President Barack Obama’s campaign-styled push for healthcare reform continues, a new poll today shows that, for the first time, public support for his handling of the issue has slipped below 50 percent.
The president’s overall job-approval remains well above 50 percent in the Washington Post/ABC News survey. However, that measure as well — 59 percent — has slipped below 60 percent for the first time in Post/ABC polling.
Other polls, notably the Gallup Poll, also have found the president’s approval slipping into the high 50s.
But, at this juncture in the push for healthcare reform on Capitol Hill, it is the president’s handling of healthcare that is making headlines this morning in Washington:
Just 49 percent surveyed by the Post and ABC said they approve of the way Obama is handling healthcare. That is down from 53 percent in June and 57 percent in April.
The share of people voicing disapproval for the president’s handling of the issue has risen from 29 percent in April to 44 percent in the newest, July survey.
The slide in support for the president’s handling of healthcare mirrors a loss of support on other domestic issues as well, "such as the economy and the federal budget deficit,” the Post notes, "as rising concern about spending and continuing worries about the economy combine to challenge his administration.”
Read the complete article: By Mark Silva
Tags: Barack Obama, public approval, Public Option, Sliding healthcare numbers
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