The White House’s health care proposal takes the Senate path and excludes a public health insurance option. The apparent logic, as indicated by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, was that a public option couldn’t get even 50 Senate votes today.
This may be true, only 20 have signed this month’s letter urging its inclusion.
But if the sudden drop of support is based on the notion that scrapping the public option will end the slanderous right-wing attacks, Republican Party leaders quickly proved that was not the case.
Despite their being no public option that can be twisted around to charge President Obama with wanting a government takeover of health care, Republicans leader continued charging Obama with wanting a government takeover of health care.
The House Minority Leader John Boehner released a statement baselessly asserting: “The President has crippled the credibility of this week’s summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected.”
House Republican Conference Chair Mike Pence similarly lied in calling the plan, “just more of the same government-run insurance.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gets points for a creative pirouette — in the same sentence McConnell decried made-up benefit cuts in an actual government-run insurance program while attacking government involvement in insurance: “Our constituents don’t want yet another partisan, back-room bill that slashes Medicare for our seniors … and further expands the role of government in their personal decisions.”
As you can see, there’s literally nothing Democrats can propose that won’t be attacked by Republican leaders as a government takeover of healthcare.
And it’s just as easy to say in response, “We dropped the public option” as it is to say “The public option is an option. If you like your private insurance you can keep it.” This is why the public option has always retained strength in opinion polls.
The only hope is, on the heels of Wednesday’s Virtual March For Real Health Care Reform, for someone attending Thursday’s summit to dramatically reassert the case for the public option and rally another 30 Senators to find their spines.
We will see.
