Sunday, August 16, 2009 9:07:49 PM
The Atlantic, 8/16/09
Marc Ambinder
Administration Official: "Sebelius Misspoke." An administration official said tonight that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius "misspoke" when she told CNN this morning that a government run health insurance option "is not an essential part" of reform. This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President... A second official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform communications for the administration, said that President Obama ... had not backed away from that belief, and that he still wanted to see a public option in...
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NOTE: Ask yourself as you read this if this man in the White House knows what he is doing when it comes to Healthcare. Has he even read the bills? How can you hold Town Halls on the Obamacare bill when they are five bills right now? Now people close to him are talking about throwing in the towel on the public option while that was the cornerstone of Obamacare. Is anyone in charge in DC or is this how liberals run the Country? This issue is too important to leave to amateurs and that is exactly what we are seeing out of the Democrat liberal leadership. They prefer to call names if people don't agree with them instead of doing what is best for the Country.
The lies coming out of the Town Halls by this President are huge. Obama said orthepedic surgeons charge $30,000 - $40,000 for an amputation of people with diabetes when it is less then a $1,000 is wrong and an affront to the many orthepedic surgeons who work tirelessly day in and day out to provide a better life for their patients.
Now Obama is hanging the liberals who support a public option and which he supported until last night out to dry or is he going to throw them under bus? When are people going to wake up that they elected someone with no experience and could care less about anyone but himself? Read the article and judge for yourself where Obama stands on healthcare. When you figure it out, please advise so the rest of us can make sense of this Administration.
Sam
Obama picks public option fight with liberals
The Hill ^ Swanson Ian Swanson
In backing away from its support for a public option in healthcare reform, the Obama administration is picking a fight with the liberal wing of the Democratic party.
Liberal Democrats have insisted a public insurance option is necessary to ensure competition for private insurers. Just this week, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean predicted there could be Democratic primary challenges if a healthcare bill without a public option is approved by Congress.
Dean also told liberal bloggers gathered last week at the “Netroots Nation” convention that the only piece of reform left in the House bill that is worth doing is the public option.
The left wing of the Democratic party already has been irritated by concessions its leaders have made on healthcare to centrists in the House and Senate.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) told CNN on Sunday it would be “very difficult” for she and other liberals to support legislation that does not include a public option.
“The only way we can be sure that very low-income people and persons who work for companies that don’t offer insurance have access to it, is through an option that would give the private insurance companies a little competition,” she said.
Johnson added that House liberals have already told Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that she should insist on White House support for a public option.
Some liberals are already disappointed with positions President Barack Obama has taken since his election.
For example, Obama hasn’t moved to repeal the don’t ask, don’t tell law on gays in the military, to the dismay of some liberals. Others were upset with his decision to not release photos detailing the abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Over the weekend, Valarie Jarrett, a close advisor to Obama, was hissed at and booed by some attending the Netroots Nation over the photo issue, according to a report in The Huffington Post.
Still, liberals might have a hard time dropping their support for landmark legislation reforming healthcare over the lack of a public plan, particularly if a final bill does set up co-ops. In addition, the dropping of a public option could make it easier for the bill to attract support from conservative Democrats and Republicans.
Rep. Mike Ross (Ark.), a blue dog Democrat who won several concessions for conservative Democrats in a House Energy and Commerce Committee healthcare bill approved by the panel just before the recess, said a final bill by Congress is likely to be written by the Senate Finance Committee.
“It’s probably going to have to be bipartisan in the Senate, which I think it should be, and – so I know a lot of members in my party in the House don’t want to hear this, but the reality is that what comes out of that conference report, which is what really matters, my guess is about 90 percent of it will be reflected from what’s in the Senate Finance Committee,” Ross said on CNN.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), a key member of Finance involved in negotiations on the panel’s bill, all but said a public option is dead in comments today on Fox.
The administration signaled its shift on the public option in comments Sunday by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.
Sebelius said that what the president sees as essential is to set up competition to private insurers in the healthcare system. But she said that doesn’t have to come from a public health insurance option.
“Well, I think there will be a competitor to private insurers,” she said on CNN. “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.”
A short time later, Gibbs stopped far short of earlier calls insisting on a public plan.
“What the president has said is in order to inject choice and competition. . . people ought to be able to have some competition in that market,” Gibbs said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Asked if he was hedging on support for a public plan, Gibbs said, “The president has thus far sided with the notion that that can best be done with a public option.”
Gibbs and Sebelius seemed to be making clear what President Barack Obama had hinted at on Sunday during a town hall event in Colorado broadcast across the country on cable television.
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