Obama’s Website Quietly Drops Support of Public Option

It looks like President Obama’s campaign site cum community organizing website, Organizing for America (OFA), has quietly dropped its claim that the “public option” is a “must” in its healthcare policies open letter to Congress.

Originally the open letter told Congress that it “must” vote for the public option. The second bullet point in the OFA’s letter originally read as follows:

Guarantee choice - Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor - including the choice of a public insurance option.

(A screen shot of the relevant section of the original is page below. While it lasts, here is the Google cached page.)

That was when Obama was raising money from his lefty followers. Now, however, it’s a different story.

Apparently that whole “must” urgency is no longer as important on Obama’s campaign website. Now the original, more insistent bullet points are gone and a generic message only mentioning that the Obama plan has a public option in it now appears.

So, what gives? Has Team Obama decided to thumb its nose at its far left followers and shy from the so-called public option? Has the White House and the DNC realized that the public option is a loser and must be thrown under the bus? Is it just fatal realism hitting Team Obama between the eyes?

Well whatever is happening in the halls of power, it sure is vexing to Obama's far left base. Several sites on the left are a tad annoyed... OK they are really peeved... about this turn of events that tends to run against their ideal healthcare proposal. Sites such as FireDogLake.com, TheNewArgument.com, and Florida Progressive Coalition Blog have all had entries carping about the OFA flip flop.

Looks like Obamacare is not finding friends anywhere.

**UPDATE**

Rush Limbaugh mentioned this piece in his Thursday afternoon show.

wylie_e_coyote

This is a very dangerous period because Nationalization will still occur even without an overt government run insurance plan like this "public option" provision everyone keeps fixating on - everything else contained in the plan is just as dangerous and is not being discussed in any kind of a targeted manner.

Here are the core elements what will be contained in the “health care reform compromise” after the so-called “public option” is in all likelihood dropped; both the Bacus and Wyden-Bennett bill contian all of these items:

(a) Federal Regulation aka HEALTH CZAR/DEATH PANELS/RATIONING
(b) Employer/Individual Mandates aka NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE
(c) Government Subsidies aka MIDDLE CLASS MEDICAL WELFARE

With the Federal Government setting the rules, forcing everyone to participate, and is paying the bills for most of the middle class through subsidies how is this anything other than Nationalization?

And its clearly a government take-over of health care – only the names are changed to make us feel better about the arrangement. Since the government will be controlling the market and setting the terms, health insurance companies will essentially quasi-governmental agencies who get to administer the plan. They will be controlled in the same manner as GM or CITIGROUP and will be private in name only.

The common thread in all of the so-called "compromise" or bi-partisan plans is the Individual Mandate to force people to buy government dictated health insurance. This needs to be the focus for conservatives now!

Clearly, the Individual Mandate is a gross violation of our liberty and an Unconstitutional Tax – in essence the government is giving no choice in how you get to take care of your own body. These Mandates force everyone in the country into insurance plans that are designed by the Federal Government thus giving them control over everyone's choices. Mandates also fund the whole plan since they force young and healthy citizens or citizens who prefer to self insure to buy expensive policies that really don’t need and won’t likely use and employers to pay huge taxes (yes, in a lot of cases health insurance make no economic sense and nobody should be forced to buy a product or service they don’t need.) This is a stealth tax on the young and healthy by the government. It allows the politicians to continue to shift the costs of the bankrupt Medicare/Medicade program by continuing the practice of allowing providers to overcharge private consumers/insurance to make up for those programs payment shortfalls (this will get worse too as there are 500 billion in Medicare cuts in the plan too).

Finally, the Mandates are the carrot that keeps the insurance industry on board with the scheme since they give them millions and millions of new customers – it is basically another big industry bailout (big Health Insurance companies are in great financial distress since they lost heavily in last year’s market collapse and have a disproportionate number of aging “babyboomer” customers who are getting older and sicker thus more costly – 80 million of their 135 million customers are between the ages of 50-65 years old).

I would strongly advocate to conservatives in the Media/GOP elected officials that they stress to three very simple messages:

(1) The Individual Mandates need to be opposed and need to be the center piece of the opposition message - they are the most political unpopular feature of the Obamacare plan and they hold the whole scheme. Simply put, there is no government takeover without Mandates.

(2) Health Insurance Companies need to be called out for receiving Bailout money and a Monopoly Market . Health Insurance execs are politically unpopular and this would put the GOP/Opponents on the side of the people and not the special interests. We conservatives have a responsibility to defend the concept of insurance and free markets but not the current government and special interest distorted market.

(3) Obamacare is a corrupt barging that benefits big government, powerful Washington politicians, big union, and big companies/industry at the expense (once again) of the taxpayer, small business, the elderly, and the young.

Particularly, Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate need to understand this as many of the “compromise” plans being discussed contain all of these elements. They need to be forced to go on record as not only opposing the “government options” but these Employer/Individual Mandates too before they fall into the trap of thinking they are acceptable and not government run health care. The “free rider” argument makes little sense too as an excuse for conservatives to fall for supporting the Individual Mandate - we should not except this excuse from our elected represenative. Basically, the total amount of uncompesated care by the uninsured equates to about 3% of total health care spending in this country. This is a vey small cost to pay to keep our own individual liberty and choices as a free people.

Individual Mandates to buy private insurance sound like a “free market” solution and “individual responsibility” but in this context they are not – they are simply a front for a government run system. Again, the common thread in every liberal/statist health care bill is the Individual Mandate. To see it in action, look no further then how these Mandates in MA work to give government full control and to skyrocket costs. Many conservatives can be easily fooled by this faux “private” front (Mitt Romney was) – there needs to be united conservative opposition to Mandates now!