You are more than welcome. Glad we've called eachother friends now. I really, truly do not want to come across as an angry red faced jerk.
Obama, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan."
YouTube - Obama on single payer health insurance
All you really have to do is look at the placard on the podium. It is something called pandering, and all politicans do it almost daily, the President I support included. AFL CIO has long been active in Democratic primaries, and have a long standing position in support of single payer. It was also a women's and human rights forum, these kind of activists would tend to be more pro single payer.
Where is the reality of his position, then?
1.)Lets have a look at the video. Obama had much less gray hair! He looks pretty damn young. Then there is that little thing about how we need to take back the White House AND take back Congress. So one does not have to be in the CIA or be a detective to figure out he was speaking around 2005 or 2006.
2.)His health care proposal that he unveiled in 2007 in Iowa City said nothing of single payer or even a public option. In fact, commentators left and right noted how centrist it was compared to Hillary and Edwards. The health care plan he ran with in the campaign came from Kerry, who actually stole it from Biden. Biden is not a lunatic liberal.
3.)Have a look at what Obama said as he was running for President:
Obama health care ad casts him as offering the moderate choice -- Eye on Ohio | Openers Archive Site - cleveland.com
4.)The principles he set forth for Congress upon being elected drew some lines in the sand, but none with respect to single payer or the public option. The Public option was almost entirely a project of the House Liberals, Pelosi herself really not too enamored with it but rolling with it to keep a part of the caucus happy.
5.)His position has been pretty damn consistent since at least 2007 on health care. Even before that, we have one speech before a biased interest group versus some 2004 policy papers and 2005/06 Senate statements that make plenty of mention of the reforms in the bill, but no mention of single payer.
6.)Everthing Obama has proposed or enacted has reflected statements, web sites and policy papers Obama has put out in support of moderate health care reform since 2004. Nothing making it to a campaign proposal, a bill or a law has ever reflected the statement he made in support of single payer. I am not denying the video you posted, that would be lunacy, maybe there are similar ones out there. However, I submit that, given what he has formally proposed and enacted, you could find him giving statements that are the opposite of what you posted to the AARP or business groups or conservative Dems in downstate Illinois or town halls in Iowa in 2004-08.
Well... I hope you're right and I'm doing my best to keep it that way.
It is a concern of middle class and wealthy people to have to pay a tax for government health care when they already have good health care from a competitive private sector. Competition and private enteprise are pretty ingrained in our culture. Besides, I have not done a poll, but I would not imagine that single payer plays well with independents, the people who decide who sits in the oval office.
From an individual rights and social justice standpoint, I really do not see Americans, with their inherent sense of opportunity and fairness, going for a system where the guy working at Burger King pays a tax to cover Bill Gates' health care.
I honestly do not think you will have to worry. Obama just yesterday told a kid who was yelling for a public option that the votes were not there in Congress, that it was the idea of some in Congress and that there was "no need to shout young man." Obama really is not as far left as people think he is.
Some of us would argue that the public option is a leg in the door to single-payer. And many liberals are quoted saying as much.
Very true. But again, even the public option had nowhere near enough votes in a overwhelmingly Democratic Congress and almost no appetite in the Senate. Even if the public option were passed, it really resembles private plans more than it does single payer. Additionally, the vast majority of its proponents argued for it not as a foot in the door, but as a check on private insurance and a means of competition.
The people who would argue it as a foot in the door are much fewer in number, and their arguing this way is playing to the base and a testament to the existence of wishful thinking. They are the same pundits, activists and Congressional Progressive caucus members who did not even have the votes for Public Option, never mind single payer.
It is unlikely that, with the positie effects we will see from this bill, there will develop a major movement for single payer that picks up momentum in Congress.
1.)Democrats who voted for a very moderate bill are already literally in the crosshairs just for that. You think they will go for single payer, especially when it would put many campaign contributors out of business?
2.)One would think with all the stories of cancer patients dropped and left for dead, the 60% premium increases, the 50 million w/o health care and the record profits of insurance companies, that single payer support would be at its highest point right now. Probably is... and guess what, it did not even make the most partisan bills this year.
I doubt ,with companies better regulated and more access to the quality of care we already provide to those who have it, that we will see a massive outcry for single payer any time soon.