Posted on 08/06/2009 12:02:03 PM PDT by NEOhio
Obama’s questionnaire responses at odds with health care claim
By James D. Agresti
August 5, 2009
Click for more detailed footnoted version
In a speech before the American Medical Association on June 15, 2009, President Obama lashed out at those claiming he is pursuing a stealth agenda to socialize the U.S. healthcare system.
Declaring that his health care plan is not “a Trojan horse for a single-payer system,” Obama vowed, “So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this – they are not telling the truth.”
However, Obama’s responses to a 1996 questionnaire reveal an agenda at odds with his claim and in near-perfect accord with critics’ assertions regarding his healthcare plan.
Asked if he supported “a single payer health plan for Illinois,” Obama answered, “Yes,” but then went even further, stating that “such a program would probably have to be instituted at the federal level; the long-term objective would be a universal care system that does not differentiate between the unemployed, the disabled, and so on.”
One day later, Obama filed an amended response to the same questionnaire, calling for Medicaid recipients and “all workers” in Illinois to be enrolled in a “single, graduated system.”
A Pattern of Denials
Obama’s replies to this questionnaire were uncovered in 2007 and 2008 by Politico, fueling a debate over gun control based on Obama's answer of “Yes” to the question, “Do you support state legislation to ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns?”
When the questionnaire first emerged revealing Obama’s stances on gun control and other controversial issues such as parental consent for minors undergoing abortions, Obama’s campaign denied he provided the answers and claimed a staffer filled out the form without Obama’s knowledge.
However, all known verifiable evidence points to the contrary. For example, both forms contain answers written in the first-person voice, with phrases such as, “I support,” “I oppose,” and “I believe.”
Additionally, the first response includes a cover sheet specifying a “Date of Interview” and “Place of Interview,” and the second response contains a note in what appears to be Obama’s handwriting.
After Obama's first response to the questionnaire was published, Carol Harwell, a former Obama campaign manager claimed that she filled out the form. But, after her assertion was undermined by the discovery of the second reply with Obama’s handwriting and contradicted by an Obama supporter whose home was listed as the “Place of Interview” on the first response, Harwell failed to return calls seeking comment.
The White House recently produced a video to counter revelations of Obama’s support for “single-payer healthcare,” an expression that studiously avoids the word “government,” which is the unnamed “single-payer.”
The narrator of the video, who is a former ABC news reporter and the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, proclaims “there are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there — they simply cherry-pick and put it together, and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say.”
Nevertheless, an uncut video from 2003 shows Obama speaking before a union conference, calling for a “single-payer universal health care program” and affirming, “everybody in, nobody out.”
© 2009 Just Facts
Excellent find! of course this is just more “disinformation,” though. :)
Don’t the Democrats recognize the irony in labeling Obama’s own words “disinformation”???!!!
WHO is not telling the truth?
Oh puhleeze. If the health care is not being run by private enterprise, it is being run by the government. Gosh, ZerO and the Bozos must really think we’re stupid. (In their defense, there ARE some people out there who are just that stupid.)
So when Obama says we can still see our same doctor or have our same insurance, he means it. He is just neglecting to say that the government will put them out of business.
BO=LSOS (Lying sack of ****).
Without regard to Obama’s intent, House Bill 3200, if enacted in iis current form, would result in a system indistinguishable from single payor.
I believe he (zero)needs to be reported to he snitch line.
Ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.