Gibbs: Nothing Has Changed, We Are Still Expecting The Public Option
Press conference on Air Force One this afternoon in which Robert Gibbs says he's baffled by all the uproar:
Q Public option -- is it dead or not?
MR. GIBBS: I got to tell you, this is one of the more curious things I've ever seen in my life. I was on a Sunday show, I said the same thing about a public option that I've said for I don't know how many weeks. The Secretary reiterated what the President said the day before, and you'd think there was some new policy.
Q The language appeared to be --
MR. GIBBS: The language "appeared" to be?
Q Well, the language on Saturday -- the President made -- saying that the public option was only a sliver, and whether it's in it or it isn't in it seems to move the ball a little bit from where you guys were. No?
MR. GIBBS: No. I think you can go back and find the President saying -- look, the President has said that's his preference, but the President has also said I don't know how many times if the goals are choice and competition, right, the reason you have a public option is because you have an insurance market that doesn't have choice or competition. If somebody is trying to seek private insurance on -- private health insurance on a private market and only has -- because this happens in some areas or in some states where there's one insurance company that does business in that region, that that is -- that doesn't ensure the type of affordability and quality that you'd want to see in a health insurance system.
So you have some competition that provides some choice, so that if a family of four might have different insurance needs than a single person or a couple that's married with no children or what have you. The goals are choice and competition. His preference is a public option. If there are other ideas, he's happy to look at them. Because I think his -- I think this is true not only for the issue of health care, but for virtually every other issue that he'll ever deal with in public life is he has goals about what he wants to accomplish and he's not necessarily wedded to one -- only one way of getting there. I think he's said that a hundred times.
Q Just to be completely clear, has anything changed on the public option?
MR. GIBBS: No. I challenge you guys all to go back and see what we've said about this over the course of many, many, many, many months, and you'll find a boring consistency to our rhetoric.
Q The rhetoric, as you say, might be consistent, but the movement on the ground, so to speak, toward legislation hasn't been. Is there any recognition now that a public option is looking less likely to be part of a final deal?
MR. GIBBS: Let me make sure I understand your question, because I want to know if it's -- is this predicated on legislative developments since Congress has been out of session, or are we trying to match the stampede of a series of stories to if not the consistent language that we've all been saying to some now legislative vote?
Q It's just looking more and more likely that a public option is not going to be part of the final bill. I'm wondering if the White House is --
MR. GIBBS: I do think -- can I just -- I want to point out the -- how do I phrase this -- massive irony that I don't know that I saw any of your stories denote the fact that this might be -- that you're surmising now this was a political reality rather than --
Q That's what we're asking.
MR. GIBBS: I understand, but did you think from the phrasing of Julianna's question that we might be coming to justify a series of stampeding stories in one direction based on something different than what we've always said?
Q But you guys have -- you haven't exactly come out publicly since Sebelius' statement yesterday, come in front of the cameras to speak to us, to downplay --
MR. GIBBS: Because nothing has changed.
Q But you haven't downplayed the remarks and the coverage either.
MR. GIBBS: No, no, I think many people talked to you all yesterday. I think people sent e-mails. David Axelrod called people.
Q (Inaudible.)
MR. GIBBS: I didn't get an e-mail from you. Nothing has changed. I mean, we can go out and say nothing has changed, but that seems sort of silly since nothing has changed.
Look, in terms of the political realities, obviously there's a public plan -- or public option in the House bill. There is a public option in the HELP bill. I don't know what the Senate Finance Committee will come out with.
If the bill comes out of reconciliation without a public option, do you have the guts to veto it?
Is all that tough talk about being form Chicago just that?
And, for the rest of us, the real problem is in Congress. If a bill can't get out of it without this many problems, when there are this many presumed potential supporters for a public option and this much public support for a public option .. wow. Just wow. We are all Californians soon. Our legislature is broken.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea0CDieb4yM
He has yet to bring a gun to a knife fight.
just blew up in their faces.
Oops. No, Sebelius didn't say that it was optional! Where you getting that idea? We've been consistent.
It's not like even the LONDON FINANCIAL TIMES claimed Obama had backed away from the public option.
Nuh-uh! We didn't say that.
Stop calling and emailing everybody already! We didn't actually take away the public option.
Assholes. Three quarters of the country wants a public option. Ignore them at your peril.
The entire bill is flim flam it will hack away at Medicare and Medicaid and transfer the money to the profiteers.
The profiteers, who will have 50 million new suckers they can require huge co pays and deductibles, while gouging the government for the subsidies for those who cannot pay.
The public option is, in the words of Howard Dean, the last shread of reform.
That is all it is, a tiny shread.
It will cover at the last estimate, fewer than ten million people.
STOP CHIRPING AWAY ABOUT THIS BULLSHIT PUBLIC OPTION.
HR 676 Single Payer, Medicare for all IS THE MINIMUM we should accept.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlqXXQSDGEI&fe...
(Psssttt....John...how about giving Alice a thread of her own???!!!)
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
She's ok. but just ok.
At least she is not republican.
But Nader has always been for Nader!
When you play team sports, the team against you is the immediate problem. Not more teams where one or more sits idly on the sidelines.
Single payer is the goal. Republicans in general are the other team. There is no in-between. Abby!
the other team. However, the problems at hand are elected democrats. The only leverage a citizen has is a vote. If your democratic representatives don't comply, you at least have the illusion that your vote can work against them.
In this battle my enemy's enemy is my friend.
Theodore Roosevelt Bull Moose party platform.
To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." - 1912 Progressive Party Platform,
How many blue dogs are there? That is a rhetorical question.
Not a Republican!!!!!
DUDE, I'm a SOCIALIST, if I were ever in a room full of Republicans they would murder me as I was throwing them out the window…
Single payer is to the LEFT of the Democrats but to the right of me, I want FULL NATIONAL HEALTH. Get ALL profit motive out of health care. Single payer would be an acceptable compromise.
And Nader has done more for you than your mother…
If he was only for himself why does he endlessly campaign for consumer protection and now single payer!!!???
And he gets harassment from you.
Sheesh…
OBTW I provide endless links, where are yours?
---
Nader at Commondreams on Single Payer
"Now Make Me Do It"
here
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Nader on Faulty Forecasting
Wall Street fat cat financial forecasters who make a bundle no matter how crappy their product here
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Nader on Privatization of Public Property, here
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Nader on Baucus having single payer advocates arrested, The Single Payer Taboo, Remember the Baucus Eight, here
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Nader at Democracy Now: Now You Do Not Cut Deals With the System That Must Be Replaced, on Obamas deals with the health corporation vampires, here
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Nader Health Care Hypocrisy, more on single payer, here
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Nader Back in the USA, a manufacturer relocates in texas from abroad with ten dollar an hour jobs, here
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Nader Practically on the Table , corporate control of this country, and its congress, here
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Nader Making Cancer Cool Tobacco and Hollywood here
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There lots more than that. If you didn't send me on a Nader kick I would provide links to the other voices. Where are yours?
This is not someone who is only out for himself. 80% of our congress is only out for themselves.
Nader cannot be bought. Where are your links? Do you have any?
Read the ones I have given you and get back to me if think that Ralph Nader is out for himself.
Before you do, call the congressional switchboard number that he so thoughtfully provided for you.
Where are your Democrats on this? For the most part sitting idly by.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Alice, you don't sound like a dreaded Socialist to me, just a main stream Canadian ! :) The Dems are so screwed. :(
Pay DAK and get your own plethora of sound effects!
This existing bill is becoming a tossing of scraps to industry donors. What it also does is give legislators say the opportunity to say they "worked hard" to:
a) get even that much to pass - if Dem
b) stop the bad parts from passing - if Rep
Win for donors, win for stump speeches on both sides of the aisle, lose - the rest of us.
SINGLE PAYER had better be THE "public option" that comes out of the House & Senate Reconciliation for Health Care Reform, and NOT "Health Care INSURANCE Reform" that caters to the Medical-Industrial Complex the way that Medicare Part D does with Big Pharma.
Unconvinced? Please bother to check out just how badly the RethugliKKKlan's CO-OP Program is working in Massachusetts. Thanks, Former governator Mitt Rommney! Your MA legacy is a FRAUD!
It has FAILED to provide coverage to ALL of this state's uninsured.
It has FAILED to control health care costs, which are out of control.
It has FAILED to encourage ALL businesses there to provide health care coverage, in spite of onerous fines that cost businesses LESS than insurance premiums.
CO-OPs just do NOT WORK.
SINGLE PAYER is THE ONLY solution to (A) controlling spiraling health care costs, (B) offers health care coverage to the 47 Million and Growing number of uninsured Americans, and (C) offers an option for coverage for the 10's of Millions of Under-Insured Americans who just don't know it yet (as so aptly illustrated by Michael Moore's documentary "SICKO".
Our loyal elected government representatives had better be prepared for MASSIVE BLOWBACK from their pending FAILURE to provide UNIVERSAL coverage under a SINGLE PAYER option, at their OWN political PERIL. Now IS the time for Single Payer Health Care, regardless of GD RethugliKKKlan non-bipartisanship.
Support HR-676 as The OUTCOME, not as a Bargaining CHIP. Congress-critters, git it done!
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
is the only thing that is going to or can work. If a public option has any limits at all about who can or can't opt for it, it isn't a public option. It's just more bullshit. It is incomprehensible to me how anyone claiming to be a Democrat can support continuing any remnant of the present irredeemably system. I consider every one who is working to allow the medical insurance industry to continue to exist to likewise be irredeemably corrupt and/or terminally stupid. They have been taking this Nation to the cleaners for decades, yet Obama et Crew wants to allow them to continue sucking the blood out of us? Are they insane?
There's is nothing these corrupt bastards can do or put into law that cannot be undone and set to right, once the corrupt are tossed out of office. Get rid of some Blue dogs, put in a non-corporatist president, things can be fixed in a hurry.
Come on, 2010 and 2012!
BTW, why are they kow towing to Conrad. That crook is going to be out of a job come next election. He's already irrelevent.
Gibbs knows full well that Sebelius gave TPO "the short sell", as did the President himself, and Blue Dog Conrad said it "never had a chance".
For Gibbs to say, "I don't know where this is coming from" is a bunch of bull. I don't like it when the WH plays games... even when it's on something I support.
* There are two types of Republicans: millionaires and suckers.
"Mugsy's Rap Sheet": Recording history for those who seek to rewrite it.
People went door to door to elect President Obama. We have to go door to door to elect a universal public option! Are you coming?
If you need a little incentive - just remember that Michelle Bachmann is waiting for her instructions from God before she decides what to do next. They all are.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
I wonder if the somewhat ambiguous backsliding by member of the Obama administration aren't to intially goad progressives into action in order to counterbalance the swarm of noisome loons the GOPers keep stirring up.
I grew up in America but have lived in Canada for the past thirty years. Friends, you don't know what you are missing when you can walk into any clinic and ask to see a doctor. When you are done, there is no bill. If you need tests, they send you. If you need immediate care you get a hospital bed, now. Can you imagine not worrying about whether you can afford to take your child or aging parents for a live-saving operations And don't beleive for a second, some paid "Canadian" republican plant, who tells you our system is broke. It isn't. We have a longer life expectancy, lower birth rate mortalities and lead the U.S. in almost every category of critical care. Just like almost all other first world countries. Sure we pay for it in our taxes, but our health care costs are lower overall by a substantial margin than yours. This is because public health care does not require profits and does not spend hundreds of millions trying to determine who is worth insuring and who is not. Our system also does not need to spend on lobbyists and lawyers. Please stop listening to the Palin's of the world (where did you find such an idiot?)and look around you. There are lots of countries with better, more comprehensive health care systems than yours. Remember, many of your citizens pay for their health care, with their lives! Get well soon.
And I can tell you that whatawaste speaks the truth! Our system has its problems, because what system doesn't, but those problems are all unrelated to the fact that its universal and single-payer. I really do hope that no one believes for a second that any Canadian would swap out our system for the United States' system - because it's just not so.
who will sponsor me for immigration to Canada? I want in!Your health care system is just one of the many things your country has going for it. You know what one of the things I really like about Canada? Canada state quite clearly that everyone is welcome to apply for immigration, every one except war criminals or people who have been involved in war crimes. Imagine that, Bush, Cheney and Crew would not be welcome, and not welcome for all the right reasons.
I need to "hook a Canuck". ;)
They keep checking to see if they can drop the public option. We, on the other hand, have to kick them hard every time they do.
I think they got their response LOUD AND CLEAR. Obama got most of the Democratic votes, a majority of the Indy votes and some GOP votes last November and it put him over the top. But, it was the Progressive Dems that sent him donations month after month after month, rang doorbells and made hours upon hours of phone calls evenings and weekends to get out the vote. They did this because he said he would end the War in Iraq and reform health care WITH A ROBUST PUBLIC PLAN to guarantee reducing costs and provide competition. There are other issues of course, but these two issues are essential to our support, both for the President and for Democratic members of Congress. Our Reps need to know that if they don't deliver a public plan we can get rid of them a lot faster than Obama.
"If you don't fight hard enough for the things you believe in, at some point you have to realize you don't really believe in them."
Robert, don't insult our intelligence anymore by your fake surprise and outrage that we "didn't get it." We got Kathleen's nuanced and compromising message very clearly--that the public option to her was just that---an option. It is YOU, David Axelrod, Kathleen Sebelius, and Rahm Emanuel that don't get it. You people don't want to take a determined and unequivocal stand for the public option, instead preferring to take this waffling and vacillating stand that supposedly will placate all sides and somehow help us to arrive at a "compromise." That is utter bullshit, pal.
And another thing. Public option means SINGLE PAYER---and NO LESS.
Get it through your thick skulls that the GOP will NEVER compromise with you, and they, unlike you are bold enough to be upfront about it. What the hell is wrong with you people? Are you really that dense and obtuse? What do you think you have, some magic wand or power that will win these people over? Well by god, it will have to have some mighty incredible power to win these backward looking Luddites over.
So here's the deal. Either come out unequivocally for the public option and be willing to get your ass in gear to fight for it or drop the matter completely now and start again when you have a real committment to stand up for what you promised us in the first place.
And the next thing---tell the rest of the Cabinet and your other public spokespersons to check their waffling, hand wringing, and slick wordsmithing at the door and speak with one voice--the voice that supports the public option---period. What the hell is this, a repeat of the Reagan Administration where they had to repeatedly say "what he really meant to say was..." Don't you people learn anything from history?
Politics can be a tough business and sometimes you need to knock heads together and take some risk. Nothing worthwhile is easy and stop fooling yourself about this issue. Sometimes, incremental gains are all we can get on certain issues---but this isn't one of them.
Stand up and fight for what is right and dare to take some risk, our Founding Fathers did. Look what they were able to build because of it.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
.
!
I made a slew of phone calls hither and yon today to various Congress members trying to understand what would be voted on and when regarding health care reform etc.
I mentioned a call I made to the Congressional Budget Office and in the course of the conversation I forgot to mention that this "individual" told me that the "scoring" that members of Congress would receive (if any) on "The Weiner/Conyers Amendment to H.R. 3200" would be "PURELY SYMBOLIC FIGURES" and that the debate and the vote on the amendment would be "PURELY SYMBOLIC".
SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA IS PURELY "SYMB0LIC" EH?
Well!
That's enough to make me run for Congress next year!!!
Is there anyone else out there ready to throw his/her hat in to the ring against these "Americans" who are running around right now pretending to represent the common NEEDS (quality/affordable health care) of their constituents??
It's time to take the gloves off folks....
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
There must be some mysterious and impenetrable force field surrounding the Beltway that keeps common sense and the voice of average Americans out. It's time to send a clear message that 1. We're mad as hell, and we're not taking it anymore, and 2. This is a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, not the K Street moneyed class or corporations.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
I would be honored to help support you in any way that I can.
Considering that there are only 14 months until Mid-Term Elections, I would suggest that you start planning NOW for a campaign kick-off by Mid-November 2009.
Please feel free to contact me via email at
David
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
-- John F. Kennedy
Do it. I'll send you what money I can. Maybe Blue america can help, too.
Tell Gibbs or Obama in one of these press bullshit sessions "Next time you want to sell out the country and give up many peoples last hope at true reform aka the public option don’t act surprised when there is a major backlash"
Honestly Obama naivety is really pushing me away from the democrats. Of course the out of control completely arrogant corporations aren't going to work on real reform. No shit the Gop aren't going to work to help the democrats.
You want to find out what people really believe or where there allegiances really lay, watch what they do, not what they say. He and the people he appointed are acting true to their beliefs and allegiances. They know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it.
is not going to be the kind of coverage most Americans Need and Want - Medicare for everyone.
I've mentioned several times that I think this whole Heath Insurance 'reform' debacle is just a distraction - keep the masses busy at protest rally and reading web sites while the corpora-fascists and banksters are busy stealing the rest of our money.
All they are 'reforming' is the size of the corporate profits and bonuses for the crooks.
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
If you bastards have any hope of having a future in politics you'd better be drawing a line in the sand, kicking some blue dog asses, and putting the dead elephants out of our misery. If not, get the hell out of the way and let someone who will do it.
Blue Dog yet!
gave him an ass-chewing, and reminded him that he is just the hired help. If he doesn't perform, he's fired at the next election. He's up to his ass in insurance money, so I reminded him that the insurance companies do not have the vote. Pretty disappointing for a freshman senator, who started turning Bribe-O-crat as soon as he was sworn in. A bait and switch. He's in until 2014.
We saw it with Clinton I didn't really pay attention then, But I knew what was going on. So hard to see this happening again this time Obama had the power to do it quickly and cleanly but he choose to work with people any half brain dead chimp would know wouldn't work on health care reform. Yea the health care giants will work to half there profits for the sake of the people, yea and the earth is really a cube.
Obama and the democrats are going to try and pass some piece of shit payoff to big insurance and call it a public plan. Just like bush’s bullshit drug care/ Medicare re-org was, And the dems will lose the elections because of it. Lets just have our 2nd civil war and get it over with already gesh god knows this country is headed for it. May-be after we can have a few dozen dictator years then after the revolt give true socialism a few dozen years and if any of us are left we can try the grand experiment again.
This shit makes me depressed.
It makes me depressed too.
I say Fuck It! Make them filibuster it !
What is your conceptual, continuity?
I am trying to find a Blue Dog democrat who will offer articles of impeachment against the President for his 6 months of war crimes. Turn me on to the right nut and I will pay you $1000 and contribute to the Blue Dogs' campaign $5000.
I want:
Single payer for everyone.
An end to these expensive useless stupid wars for the oil companies.
I want the troops brought home and taken care of. 100,000 vets on the street is an absolute shame for the richest country in the world, especially when 7,000 of them are women who put it on the line for the evilest country in the world.
Wake up, you dumb bastard, I can get all of the republicans, most of the blue dogs and the racist democrats to approve.
Joe Biden isn't Presidential timber, but he's better than your boss who has done ABSOLUTELY nothing in 6 months. Hope Joe likes you as his spokesman.
1
The GOP's main MO is "projection." While the Dems seem to have adopted "triangulation." A nation facing problems that require advanced Calculus, and we can only chose from two parties which barely mastered basic Geometry.
We're so f*cked :-P
is not in the final version of the Medical Reform Bill, Obama should veto it and the people should take to the streets!1111
And there's the crux of the problem, that the Obama Admin is sitting back awaiting whatever Congress brings forward, rather than using the bully pulpit to dramatically shape the reform.
Well, alright, he's dead. Then, where is somebody like him?
LBJ passed Medicare, in a congressional landscape that was even more hostile than this one, and he did it using every strong arm tactic in the book, including horse-trading, blackmail extorion and figurative knee-capping. Whatever it took. The man stepped up to the plate and bulldozed out of his way anybody who stood in his path. He understood that the only thing his opponents understood and respected, being that the whole lot of them were a bunch of self-serving sociopaths, was force derived from the power of the office and the resolve to get down dirty and use it. That's what was taken as leadership and advocacy in those days. He didn't shrink from it. If he had, we wouldn't have Medicare/Medicaid today. Gloves off, closed-fist politics, done in the Texas Democratic Party style of the 50's and 60's.
The triangulation, the empty quest for consensus and "bipartisanship", the impotent hand-wringing, the trying to make nice-nice with sharks are just ruses the WH is using to cover its complicity in the whole filthy and corrupt process. Playing the dewey-eyed wimp in order to give the keys to the treasury away to a gigantic criminal enterprise. And, they are hoping nobody notices.
Read Robert Caro's bio of LBJ sometime. He could be a SOB sometimes, but at least he was OUR SOB.
"We will find fulfillment not in the goods that we have, but in the good we can do for each other."
Robert F. Kennedy
I firmly believe they are going to screw us. I believe the public option will be abandoned. I don't trust how it's going.
...on account of the fact that he said he doesn't know what the Senate Finance Committee is going to come out with, and that is who they have been consulting with the most. It is also the committee with Max Baucus on it, who has taken a ridiculous amount of money from the health insurance companies, and Grassley, a republican WANKER that has NO PLACE being involved in ANY policy decisions and yet somehow is on Obama's most consulted committee.
If they take the Senate Finance Committee bill, which they probably will, I bet it will suck balls for the American people.
"I don't know what the Senate Finance Committee will come out with."
Well Mr. Gibbs, the chairman of that Committee, the work ethics challenged Sen. Baucus is in the public record as saying that the Public Option has been removed from the bill they are working on. I would think that may be a small hint as to what they're going to produce.
think that what Gibbs says is accurate? Remember not that long ago when he got chewed out for saying that reinstating the AWB was a top priority of the Obama administration?
Obama's game is getting to be tiresome. Prey tell, who do we believe and on what day do we believe them?
They are EXPECTING the public option. They aren't pushing for it, they aren't demanding or advocating for it. they are expecting that it will just magically happen. With bi-partisan support no doubt.When pigs fly out of non leader Reids' ass, is when I expect the public option.
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