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In reply to the discussion: What Form Should US Healthcare Take? [View all]woo me with science
(32,139 posts)A public option was polling very well among Americans at the time.
The Third Way always wants to argue about single payer in order to try to obscure the fact that Obama sold us out on the real potential reform of a public option, which is what he campaigned on and promised to fight for.
Obama chose not to fight for a public option *after* he had promised to do so, *even when* polls showed that the country was strongly behind it, and *even though* public opinion could have been mobilized to demand it.
Not only did he make a backroom deal to kill the public option, he lied to the American people and claimed that he had never campaigned on a public option *after* the deal had been made, just as he lied to Americans that he would not support a mandate.
The truth is that, consistent with his aggressively pro-corporate appointments and proactive corporate policy agenda in virtually every other area of policy important to his corporate donors, he was working for the insurance companies' version all along.