It now appears that every time since last July that Obama said he was in favor of a public option for health insurance reform, he did so despite having promised the healthcare industry interests that there would be no public option in the bill.
No wonder there was no evidence of his having fought *for* the public option. To the contrary, he knew he wasn't going to allow it. >From "Did Obama Kill the Public Option in July?" by Paul Hogarth: ----- ...President Obama has been justifiably slammed for not pushing hard enough for a public option, but the truth may be even worse than that. We know the White House cut a deal with hospitals and insurance companies last July on prescription drugs -- but as a New York Times reporter said this week, they also killed the public option.... On August 13th, David Kirkpatrick reported in the New York Times that contrary to public perception, President Obama was playing a much bigger role in shaping the health care bill...."Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals," he wrote, "said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan."...Kirkpatrick went on to quote one of the industry lobbyists, Chip Kahn, who said: "We have an agreement with the White House that I'm very confident will be seen all the way through conference."... On March 15th, Ed Shultz of MSNBC had the Times' David Kirkpatrick on his show - who confirmed that Obama's backroom deal with the hospital and pharmaceutical industries last July included an agreement to kill the public option.... In other words, while Obama was still saying in September that he supports the public option (which kept us hopeful) - the President knew all along that it would never make it in the final bill. He never said he'd fight to include the public option, and repeatedly said he was "open" to other ways to achieve the same goal. But little did we know, the fix was in.... ----- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-hogarth/did-obama-kill-the-public_1_b_503975.html http://tinyurl.com/yhzd8sm Also see: ----- "NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html http://tinyurl.com/ygffa3f ----- ----- "Industry Interests Are Not in Their 'Twilight'" "...[Obama] repeatedly railed against the Washington practice of crafting bills by negotiating in secret with lobbyists and industry interests, and his whole I'll-put- these-negotations-on-C-SPAN promise was specifically designed, he said, to prevent a health care bill from being negotiated based on secret deals with the health care and pharmaceutical industries. "But that's exactly how he ended up negotiating this bill -- using the exact secret processes that he railed against and which he swore he would banish...." http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/20/health_care/index.html http://tinyurl.com/yk7suxl -----
