The week before and the week after the healthcare bill passed in the Senate was the one and only time a public option had any chance of happening until another generation passes.
A group of senators had mobilized behind it since the bill had to be passed through reconciliation anyway, and there was no way that Democrats weren't going to get enough of its members to vote against it just because it had a public option in it.
Obama nixxed it.
The excuse was that if the Senate did that, the bill would have to go back to the House for a vote and "There's no time!"
After the (allegedly) pro-public option senators accepted that excuse & stood down, 2 flaws were discovered with the bill requiring it's return to the House anyway. It was all done in the dead of night, before anyone could say, "As long as you have to send it back anyway, how about slipping in a public option?"
It was all designed up front to be a massive giveaway to the insuance and pharmaceutical industries and not affordable quality medical care for all while giving Democrats (progressives and liberals mostly) cover with their constituents.
Voters didn't put Obama and Democrats into power in 2008 to get them high fixed-price pharmaceuticals and junk insurance with no cost controls -- Voters wanted affordable quality medical treatment for everyone. So what did Obama do before negotiations began? He took single payer off the table, because if affordable quality medical treatment for everyone is the goal, single payer is the way to do it. Then Obama said that it was Congress's job to write the legislation, that he was staying out of it, and he proceeded to cut deals with PhRma, BigInsurance, Hospitals and the AMA, all the while lying about it.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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