Obama, Pelosi and The Marketing of Your Health Care Reform

I get a morning briefing every day from RedState and one of the links today was about a paragraph in a White House blog post about reporting misinformation on health care reform.  Put aside the scary notion of not qualifying what misinformation means which was the point of the RedState post, I went a read the White House blog post and watched two videos.  Now before I come to some conclusions here are four points that worry me and what I find interesting about President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Health Care Reform.

1. Obama clearly stating I believe in 2003 that he is a proponent of a Single Payer Health Care Plan.
2. Candidate Obama denied he was for Single Payer Health Care Plan unless it was from scratch, which he knows is/was an impossibility
3. White House video of a questions and answers with President Obama on the public option with the public option not being a "must have"
4. HuffingtonPost article with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that she does not have the votes to pass health care reform without a public option. (I linked to HuffPo article because HuffPo is friendly towards the left)

Ok so here's what has me worried.  President Obama is a proponent of a Single Payer option but he knows he can't get it.  The public option is the next best thing.  Passing health care reform without a public option won't happen according to Nancy Pelosi because the liberal votes on the Democratic side of the House won't agree to a proposal without it.   And, that's what's so fascinating and so scary about this situation.

• Nobody likes listening to Pelosi.  She is ground zero for partisan politics.
• The American Public historically gives low marks to the House. However,
• People still like President Obama, but
• Obama knows that he doesn't have the votes without a Public Option so he can use smooth words to say - it isn't a must-have for the Administration and he can also use smooth words that say - well if the private sector can't compete with the public version well, isn't that the free market at work?
• President Obama gives great news conferences but Pelosi is his attack person.  Basically a good cop-bad cop tactic on health care reform.

I don't believe a private sector company can compete with a massively funded public option.  Private sector companies have share holders and profit/loss statements while the public option has Congressmen who need to please roughly 51% of their voters and are devoid of profit and loss responsibilities; plus, the Government can keep funding them more and more with a single vote or change the rules to benefit the public option.

To me - this is as simple as FedEx & UPS versus the US Postal Service for home mail delivery (not packages and next day air).  If FedEx and UPS could actually deliver letters (ie mail) to your home, the US Postal Service would have been finished a long time ago.  However, we keep the USPS in business by allowing them to increase the cost of mail and by NOT allowing the private sector to deliver mail into your home. (BTW - here's the language about the USPS monopoly via the Wikipedia link above - FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS express mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages. Due to the postal monopoly, they are not allowed to deliver non-urgent letters and may not use U.S. Mail boxes at residential and commercial destinations)

Once the public option is in force, any rules can be set to force any real private sector companies out of business.   That's what worries me about the Health Exchanges.  This really is the march to Single Payer

President Obama is smooth and gives reasonable sounding, view graph deep answers that makes you sound like an idiot if you don't agree (hence the misinformation paragraph on their website - see below).  He knows he doesn't have the votes in the House, but he lets the House leadership do his dirty work while he appears to be pragmatic. Fascinating and scary at the same time.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

-------------White House Blog-------------

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to [email protected].