(Daily Beast) Public-Option Comeback a Fake Out?

[Political Heretic]

Public-Option Comeback a Fake Out?

Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Photos
The big news Friday was that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was open to adding a public option to health-care reform through reconciliation—a measure 18 senators have signed a letter to support. So the public option’s back from dead, right? Maybe not, says Ezra Klein: “I’ve spoken to a lot of offices about this now, and all of them are ambivalent privately, even if they're supportive publicly. … No one I've spoken to—even when they support the public option—thinks that its reemergence is good news for health-care reform. It won't be present in the package that the White House will unveil Monday. Everyone seems to be hoping this bubble will be short-lived.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/item/public-option-comeback-a-fake-out/false-hope/?cid=cs:headline4

[Donnachaidh]

1. *bubble*? Over 60 per cent of the public wants it but they consider it a bubble?

They should realize if they play yet another fake out on what the VOTERS want, the only bubble bursting will be in November, when THEY hand the control of Congress back to the pukes.

It ****WILL**** be their fault. Stupid fuckheads had better listen to the PEOPLE.

[asjr]

2. If all these so-called politicos are playing

with our minds they had better think again. I am finally to the point I don't believe a word I hear from them.

[maryf]

5. Over 60% of the people want universal health care

, everybody covered, the public option as it stands won't do that...

[Warpy]

3. If it is, then public fury will cause a bloodbath in November

I really don't like what I'm hearing out in workaday land. People are stretched to the breaking point, they know corporate insurance is robbing and killing them, and if there isn't either a public option or expanded Medicare, they'll have lost all hope that Congress will ever do the right thing for Americans.

Democrats who have backed the public option since Day One need to start doing damage control RIGHT NOW via broadcast ads.

Reid needs to stop counting votes and play hardball to get more of them.

[CTyankee]

8. You are absolutely right!

The true PO, the expanded Medicare, along with an expanded Medicaid was what the people were hoping for and were wildly popular. People were even wondering what happened to Single Payer according to one researcher who went out and talked to people in the street all over the country (in an interview on public radio about a month or so ago). This is so sad...

[WillyT]

4. Ezra Klein On KO Last Night:

Link (2:40 Mark): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#35489080

And Lawrence O'Donell's take, same show...

Link (right at beginning): http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#35489146

:shrug:

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Yes. Anything the people actually want causes Congress to wet themselves with fear

apparently. :shrug:

[freddie mertz]

7. I have less than no faith in Obama or Reid on this issue.

Been let down too many times.

President Obama, July 17, 2009:
Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family.

President Obama, August 15, 2009:
All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And by the way, it’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else.