Did they say what they said? Yeah, they did.

We have all heard Barack Obama repeatedly tell us that the public option in his healthcare reform plan will simply give Americans another choice in healthcare. He likes to tell us that if we like our current coverage, we'll be able to keep it. He claims that he simply wants to put competition into the healthcare system. But is that what he really wants? Is that what the Democrat Party really wants?

Here is a video clip of Barack Obama speaking to the AFL/CIO in 2003:



Bloggers and talk radio are using this clip and others like it to expose what President Obama really wants to do with healthcare coverage, and the White House is sending out damage control. In a recently released YouTube video, Linda Douglass, the Communications Director for the White House Office of Health Reform, says this:

The truth is that the President has been talking to the American people a lot about health insurance reform and what is at stake for them, so what happens is that because he’s talking to the American people so much, there are people out there with a computer, and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there, they simply cherry pick and put it together, and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say. (emphasis mine)

Go back and listen to the Obama clip again. What he said seems pretty clear to me:

I happen to be a proponent of single-payer, universal healthcare coverage... A single payer healthcare plan, universal healthcare plan, that’s what I’d like to see, but as all of you know, we may not get there immediately, because first we gotta take back the White House, and we gotta take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.

Douglass attempts to use two recent clips to try to prove that Obama didn't really say what he said. One clip that she uses is from June 23, 2009; the other is from July 28, 2009. In both clips, President of Obama is telling his audience that under his plan, if Americans like and want to keep the coverage they already have, they will be able to do so.

It seems to me that in attempting to prove that Obama didn't really say what he said, the only thing that Douglass has proven is that Obama was saying one thing in 2003 and he's saying another thing now. It's important to note that Douglass didn't say that, in the past, Mr. Obama was in favor of single-payer healthcare, but that, because of more and better information, he has changed his position. I could accept that a person could change his mind on an issue after giving the issue more study, but that's not what Douglass says has happened. She says simply that he didn't say what we can clearly hear him say.

Need more proof of what the democrats are really after? The following video includes a short clip from the above video, but it also includes Obama saying that he doesn't think we will "be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately (emphasis mine)," Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) saying that a good public option is "the best way to reach single payer,” and Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) saying that an insurance representative was correct when he told her that "a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single payer."



When someone tells you that Obama's insurance plan will not eliminate private insurance, that right-wingers are only using that as a scare tactic, let them know exactly what the President and democrats in Congress have said. And don't let them tell you that what the democrats said is not what they said.