This administration has shown clearly that they will compromise as necessary to achieve health care reform. White House backs away from public health care option
President Barack Obama and his top aides are signaling that they’re prepared to drop a government insurance option from a final health-reform deal if that’s what’s needed to strike a compromise on Obama’s top legislative priority.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Sunday that the public option was “not the essential element” of the overhaul. A day earlier, Obama downplayed the public option during a Colorado town hall meeting, saying it was “just one sliver” of the debate.
He even chided Democratic supporters and Republican critics for becoming “so fixated on this that they forget everything else” — a dig at some liberals in his own party who have made the public option the main rallying cry of the health reform debate.
If one desires universal coverage, then the means are not as important as the ends. I could argue either side of this debate. I understand the fear of a public option; I understand the desire for a public option. As Joe Scarborough said on Morning Joe today, almost no one really understands what the public option concept meant.
This move suggests that we really will get some type of health care reform this year, because the administration must have health care reform, and they are willing to compromise to pass a bill. We are entering that point in the debate that the extremists on both sides are unhappy. That speaks well for the majority in the middle.
What will the final bill look like? I suspect that we will know sometime in late September.
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Obama qualifications to reform health care:
No birth certificate
Can not stop smoking
Difficulty telling the truth.
Narcissistic personality disorder.
Therefore, I Igor produce Obama Birth Certificate at http://www.igormarxo.org
Compare Obama Care vs Igor Care at Obama vs Igor Care
Obama’s health-care promises are being exposed by the details of the actual legislation, and we WILL see costs rise. Support the goal of covering all individuals through private health insurance! http://www.friendsoftheuschamber.com/issues/index.cfm?ID=300
Why is it that health care cost us a fotune and when reform is offer every one’s got there draws!!!! in a wad
“Obama believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.. i agree with Obama.
Why can’t just those why pay taxes get health benefits…how b’out that Obama and the rest of the health care reform starters??? NO seriously, this I could be in favor of, but not just letting any old person that comes to America, even the illegal’s to get health care and our taxes go up the roof???? No, sure, I will cont. to fight this…
This is a very confusing referendum that Obama has brought on himself in order to justify his first year as President. I think this compromise shows that he will bend to get things done, and sometimes that isn’t a good thing. This shows that those in need of health care need to protect themselves now and be wary of what is to come in the area of reform.
He’s backed away from a “public option” but the co-ops seem to be pretty much the same thing, and they aren’t co-ops the way most of us non-lawyer-legislator types would define them, suc as if all the Kiwanis or Rotary clubs or small credit unions in a state banded together to get their members a group plan (which I believe is illegal at the moment).
I’ve heard a few folks on the left and in gov’t saying that the co-ops are just a different means (or even just a different name for the same means) to the same end of single-payer. If that is the case, then he’s not really compromising at all. And even if he is willing, it looks like Pelosi and Reid won’t budge an inch.
At any one snapshot in time, you can lower costs by adopting a public system. That’s pretty clear. But what’s also emerging is that moving over to a public system is foolhardy and shortsighted because over the long term, public system innovation tends to be much lower than their private system counterparts. Over a lifetime, private system progress gets you to lower costs and better real life coverage than public systems do. This is why there’s a global movement towards private systems.
Food is a commodity, and so we don’t have a government ration of staples that we pick up from the distribution center like they do in Iraq. We also have a very healthy agricultural sector that ensures that we’re unlikely to see starvation. Iraq’s agricultural sector is limping along because Iraqis can largely do without it in a pinch. Food is a right for them after all.
I would not like to see a similar result in health care.
Just wanted to let everyone know that Bill Moyers will be covering a cool documentary on his PBS show tonight called, “Money Driven Medicine”. It should be really interesting!
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html