White House Lies as it Backs Away From "Public Option"

Today the White House appeared to have taken a step back from establishing one giant public health care option, and announced that it would support some version of the Health Co-ops proposed in one version of the senate bill.

The President's lackeys were out on the Sunday News Shows, like children whose noses were bloodied in a school yard brawl claiming he wasn't hurt, the White House is backing away from the public option while suggesting it was never that important to the POTUS:

"The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it. One aspect of it," he [Obama] said in a town hall meeting [last night].

"And by the way, it's both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else," he said.

...Sebelius said the US Senate was proposing non-profit insurance cooperatives instead of government insurance, and suggested the administration might accept that.

"I think what's important is choice and competition. And I'm convinced at the end of the day, the plan will have both of those. But that is not the essential element," she said in an interview with CNN.

"I think the president is just continuing to say, let's not have this be the only focus of the conversation," she added.

...White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also suggested that having a "public option" was not as important as the broader goal of injecting some form of competition into the private insurance market.

Never that important? Maybe the President forgot his "weekly radio address" from July 18th, when he said:

...any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans - including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest - and choose what's best for your family

There are other reasons besides the public option that this version of Health Care does not make sense, and we will continue to discuss them if indeed the public plan is dead.

For now the question is, why does the administration have to lie to us. It is obvious the the pull back from the public option was a result of public protest. Is he that afraid to admit that at least in this one case, he is listening to the people?  God-forbid a politician acknowledging the public.