Health care reform: Privately, Barack Obama strongly backs public option

The Chicago Tribune ^ | October 4, 2009 | By Noam N. Levey and Janet Hook

[MaestroLC]

WASHINGTON -- Despite months of seeming ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched an intensifying behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea in the weeks just ahead.

President Barack Obama has long advocated a so-called public option, while at the same time repeatedly expressing openness to other ways to offer consumers a potentially more affordable alternative to health plans sold by private insurers.

But now, senior administration officials are holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans to bring to the Senate floor later this month, according to senior Democratic congressional aides.

Among those regularly in the meetings are Obama's top health care adviser, Nancy-Ann DeParle, aides to Reid, and Senate finance and health committee staff, both of which developed health care bills.

At the same time, Obama has been reaching out personally to rank-and-file Senate Democrats, telephoning more than a dozen lawmakers in the last week to press the case for action.

Administration officials are also distributing talking points and employing other campaign-style devices to rally support for passing a bill this fall.

The White House initiative, unfolding largely out of public view, follows months in which the president appeared to defer to senior lawmakers on Capitol Hill as they labored to put together gargantuan health care bills.

It also marks a critical test of Obama's command of the inside game in Washington in which deals are struck behind closed doors and wavering lawmakers are cajoled and pressured into supporting major legislation.

[MaestroLC]

This is surprisingly honest reporting.

This passage caught my attention: [Obama] has met repeatedly in private with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who has floated a proposal to allow states to set up government plans as a fallback if commercial insurers do not control premiums.

Private meetings with Obama. Transparency, indeed. Snowe wants to vote for Obamacare so badly she can taste it; but she can also read the polls that Americans don't want it.

And then there was this passage: And when Pennsylvania Democrats came to the White House recently to celebrate the Pittsburgh Penguins' Stanley Cup win, Obama pulled some of them aside and reiterated his commitment to the public option even as Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was preparing a bill without one.

Government-run health care: By hook or by crook.

[txgirl4Bush]

Have any of you here at FR read any of this forum? Its says “no whites allow” You would be shocked to read what is written here.

http://theobamaforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=28&order=desc

[SERKIT]

[cranked]

This was a given.

Beck covered Barry’s penchant for the public option ad nauseum.