While Obama publicly supported a public option and single payer, even ran on them, privately he had and has no intention of any kind of real reform, on healthcare or financial.
Obama was completely against mandates. He criticized Hillary's support of them -- Here is Candidate Obama on mandates.
Before the healthcare debate even began, Obama made sure that there would be no public option, no single payer universal healthcare, no means for Americans to choose a public healthcare system, no means for containing costs through public healthcare programs. He took single payer off the table and blocked all efforts to get a public option in the final legislation due to the secret deal he made (and then lied about, and then had to own up to when the memo was leaked).
A caller on CSpan just a few months ago asked Richard Wolffe, who was out plugging his latest book written from his special access to the Obama White House, if we're ever going to get a public option to keep costs down.
Wolffe makes it clear that Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats never had any intention of going with a public option or expanding public healthcare in any way (although Wolffe is mistaken when he says that Obama never ran on supporting a public option).
If only Obama had kept his campaign promises.
Obama campaigned on reregulating businesses and banks. He campaigned on ending tax breaks and subsidies to companies moving their factories and jobs overseas.
Now? Not so much.
You get the regulations first and THEN you give them the money. You put a whole healthcare program together BEFORE you get money for healthcare IT that, heaven only knows how it can comply with HIPAA. You keep your entire shopping list of needs and wants ON THE TABLE (SinglePayerUniversal healthcare) BEFORE you concede it away. Anyone who has ever written a contract, negotiated a deal of any kind knows this.
Obama has done everything @$-backwards. What he does only makes sense if he's NOT a populist, NOT a liberal (we knew he wasn't, but Obama's 'most ardent supporters' implored people to believe that "once he gets into the Oval Office, you'll see!"), and IS a continuation of the same failed policies of the transnational corporations that have destroyed the middle class.
What Obama is doing ONLY makes sense if what he wants is NOT what Obama's most ardent followers claims that they want. The only way to get Obama to do the people's bidding, get him to champion We The People and not the Corporations is for Obama's 'most ardent supporters' to stop defending him; they work against their own best interests when they do that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
0 comments:
Post a Comment