Obama ignores grassroots, listens better to $18 million in campaign contributions from BigHealth

Written by: T Nuspl on Oct 25, 2009 11:35 AM EDT

Obama is looking every bit the corrupt plutocrat today, listening to the money provided by health insurance companies during his electioneering, instead of the needs and desires of his constituents, the American people. Why else would he betray his community activist roots, and work to stunt and/or kill the public option that DFA, and many others across the nation, have been working so hard to enact this year?

Another question:

Why did DFA endorse Obama for President, instead of a genuine candidate for health care reform, like Dennis Kucinich? The Kooch has been at the forefront of the movement to reform health, co-sponsoring HR 676, the improved and expanded Medicare for All bill. Meanwhile, given Obama's conservatism, there's no chance whatsoever that President Obama will see reason and endorse single-payer, but even worse, he's now working against the public option, betraying even his own foot soldiers' desires.

This article pretty much sums up the problem:

"Leaderless: Senate Pushes For Public Option Without Obama's Support"
huffingtonpost.com
2009/10/24

President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.

The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.

"The leadership understands that pushing for a public option is a somewhat risky strategy, but we may be within striking distance. A signal from the president could be enough to put us over the top," said one Senate Democratic leadership aide. Such pleading is exceedingly rare on Capitol Hill and comes only after Senate leaders exhausted every effort to encourage Obama to engage.

"Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."

But with fundamental reform of the health care system in plain sight for the first time in half a century, the president appears to be siding with those who see the Senate and its entrenched culture as too resistant to change. Administration officials say that Obama's preference for the trigger, which is backed by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, is founded in a fear that Reid's public option couldn't get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. More specifically, aides fear that a handful of conservative Democrats will not support a bill unless it has at least one Republican member's support.

The president's retreat leaves Reid as the champion of progressive reform -- an irony that is not lost on those who have long derided the Majority Leader as too cautious.

"Who knew that when it came down to crunch time, Harry Reid would be the one who stepped up to the plate and Barack Obama would shy away from the fight," emailed one progressive strategist.

On Thursday evening, after taking the temperature of his caucus, Reid told Obama at a White House meeting that he was pushing a national public option with an opt-out provision. Obama, several sources briefed on the exchange, reacted coolly.

"He certainly didn't embrace it and he seemed to indicate a preference for continuing to work on a strategy that involved Senator Snowe and a trigger," said one aide briefed on the meeting. Several other sources, along with independent media reports, confirmed the exchange.

On Saturday, the activist group Progressive Change Campaign Committee -- which just days earlier had targeted Reid in a separate campaign -- took out a new television advertisement in Maine accompanied by an "emergency petition." Titled, "Time to Fight," the spot featured a former Obama campaign volunteer pleading with the president not to abandon the public plan.

"If this once-in-a-generation opportunity to pass a public option goes down the drain after we were just a couple votes away in each house of Congress, everyone will remember exactly who was and was not willing to fight when it counted," said the group's co-founder, Adam Green, when asked why he aired the ad. "Our grassroots pressure is an attempt to get President Obama to live up to the mandate for sweeping change that was given to him in the 2008 election."

MoveOn.org rallied its base on Friday. "The President has said many, many times that a public option is the best way to keep insurance companies honest and lower skyrocketing health care costs. Senate Democrats are ready to fight for a public option -- if the White House gives up now, it would be a tragic mistake," said an e-mail to the group's membership.

Advocates of a public option largely consider a "trigger" the equivalent of no public option at all. A trigger would implement a public option only if insurance companies failed to meet certain benchmarks over time and it would only be implemented in the regions of the country where those benchmarks weren't met. The Medicare prescription drug proposal passed in 2003 includes a "trigger," but the public provision has never been activated despite soaring drug costs. The industry can help craft the trigger language and can game its stats to prevent it from becoming reality.

"The current state of our health system should be trigger enough for anyone who's paying attention," said a congressional aide in the middle of the health care battle. "The American people pulled the 'trigger' in November."

The intellectual father of the public option, Yale Professor Jacob Hacker, told HuffPost that the trigger proposal is a betrayal.

"The trigger is an inside-the-beltway sleight of hand that would protect private insurers from the real competition that a strong public health insurance option would create," he said in an e-mail. "It is unworkable in the current Senate bills, unwise as public policy, and unwanted by the substantial majority of Americans who say they want a straight-up public option."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/24/leaderless-senate-pushes_n_332844.html

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