[Peace-discuss] Fw: NY Times reporter confirms Obama made deal to kill public option (Mike Mogulescu, Huffington Post)

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----- Original Message ----- 
From: David Sladky 
To: undisclosed-recipients: 
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 5:02 PM
Subject: NY Times reporter confirms Obama made deal to kill public option (Mike Mogulescu, Huffington Post)








-----Original Message-----
From: Scott McLarty <scottmclarty at yahoo.com>
To: usgp-media at gp-us.org; dcsgp at yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, Mar 19, 2010 1:49 pm
Subject: [usgp-media] NY Times reporter confirms Obama made deal to kill public option (Mike Mogulescu, Huffington Post)


NY Times Reporter Confirms Obama Made Deal to Kill Public Option

By Mike Mogulescu
The Huffington Post, March 16, 2010
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html


For months I've been reporting in The Huffington Post that President Obama made 
a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital lobby that he would 
make sure there would be no national public option in the final health reform 
legislation. (See here, here and here). I've been increasingly frustrated that 
except for an initial story last August in the New York Times, no major media 
outlet has picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that's changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed New York Times 
Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV show, and Kirkpatrick 
confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for 
the for-profit hospital industry on Kahn's confidence that the White House would 
honor the no public option deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

"That's a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he's talking about the hospital 
industry's specific deal with the White House and the Senate Finance Committee 
and, yeah, I think the hospital industry's got a deal here. There really were 
only two deals, meaning quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the 
hospitals and the other with the drug industry. And I think what you're 
interested in is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, 
shared on behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the 
other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product."

Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina 
had confirmed the existence of the deal.

This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that he thought a 
public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to believe his 
healthcare plan would include one, he had promised for-profit hospital lobbyists 
that there would be no public option in the final bill.

The media should be digging deeper into this story. Washington reporters should 
be asking Robert Gibbs if President Obama is still honoring this deal. They 
should be calling Jim Messina and hospital lobbyist Chip Kahn to confirm the 
specifics of the deal. They should be asking Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic 
leaders Dick Durbin and Harry Reid the extent of their knowledge of this deal. 
They should be asking Pelosi if the reason she's refusing to include a public 
option in the House reconciliation bill to be sent to the Senate is that there 
are at least 51 Senate Democrats who would vote for it and she needs to insure 
that a final bill with a public option does not end up on President Obama's desk 
where he would then have to break his deal with the hospital lobbyists and sign 
it, or veto it to honor his deal.

More deeply, there are serious questions about the extent to which Obama, with 
the help of Rahm Emanuel, used a K Street strategy to pursue health care reform. 
The strategy seems to have been to make backroom deals to protect the interests 
of the likes of the drug industry and the for-profit hospital industry in 
exchange for campaign cash, even if this meant reversing campaign promises to 
include a public option to put competitive pressure on private insurance 
premiums, and to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices and Americans 
to buy cheaper drugs from Canada. The result is a health care bill that is 
generally unpopular with voters. Questions need to be asked, too, about the 
extent to which the White House is following a similar K Street strategy with 
Wall Street financiers when it comes to shaping financial reform and new 
regulations to rein in the banks who brought the economy to its knees.

Voters viscerally sense that the White House and Congressional Democrats may be 
as concerned with protecting special interests -- whether it's drug companies, 
private hospitals, or Wall Street bank -- than they are with protecting the 
people, and this is feeding a populist backlash against Democrats that resulted 
in Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts and is making a Democratic bloodbath 
in the fall elections increasingly likely. 

Polls indicate that about 60% of voters support a public option while only about 
1/3 support the overall Democratic healthcare bill. There still time -- very 
little time -- for Democrats to shift course and include a public option in the 
final bill, even if it means going back on the White House's backroom deal with 
the hospital industry. If the media picks up on this story, perhaps the White 
House and Congressional Democrats can be embarrassed into changing course. If, 
on the other hand, Democrats continue to honor these special interest deals, 
then passing an unpopular health care bill may just be walking into a Republican 
trap.






      
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