Roman Around

Last week, in front a Hillsboro, Missouri crowd, Senator Clair McCaskill asked the fateful question, “Don’t you trust me?”

The crowd answered with a resounding, “No!”

Keep that sentiment in mind while this story develops.

In a blog from earlier this morning, commenting on reports that the White House may be “backing away” from the “public option” in the ObamaCare debacle, I began one of the paragraphs, “Still, if there is any truth to the reports that Obama is slinking away from his unapologetic desire to have the federal government takeover the healthcare system …”

Note the degree of confidence I place in anything that comes from this White House or anyone affiliated with this administration.

I am simply not convinced that the “public option” is off the table – or that it ever will be.

Neither are Democrats (as I will get to in a moment).

“Public option” or not, this debate is far from over. And if there will not be a ”public option,” then what? Once the government finds its way into the kitchen, does anyone truly believe they will not eventually slither their way to the stove and poison the stew anyway?

There is simply no telling what the Democrats are thinking or what any of this really means. The party’s liberal base obviously wants this health care overhaul to happen, and as I alluded to in my earlier piece, Dems may be more than willing to take some minor to moderate hits in order to bring this victory home for Obama, as long as the power ultimately remains theirs.

Yet, as things continue to develop, the Dems seem  a tad confused.

Yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did an about-face on a long-time hallmark of the Obama health care vision, saying that government-run health care wasn’t “the essential element” of reform. (Since when?) She started talking about “insurance cooperatives” (Co-Ops) – a phrase that is sure to find its way into the American lexicon post haste.

But hold on.

In response to Sebelius, an administration official (anonymously) came forward and said that Sebelius actually misspoke.

Get that?

She misspoke.

Mark Ambinder at The Atlantic writes:

This official asked not to be identified in exchange for providing clarity about the intentions of the President. The official said that the White House did not intend to change its messaging and that Sebelius simply meant to echo the president, who has acknowledged that the public option is a tough sell in the Senate and is, at the same time, a must-pass for House Democrats, and is not, in the president’s view, the most important element of the reform package.

A second official, Linda Douglass, director of health reform communications for the administration, said that President Obama believed that a public option was the best way to reduce costs and promote competition among insurance companies, that he had not backed away from that belief, and that he still wanted to see a public option in the final bill.

“Nothing has changed.,” she said. “The President has always said that what is essential that health insurance reform lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. He believes that the public option is the best way to achieve these goals.”

Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, on the other hand, says that the “public option” is all but dead.

Carrie Budoff Brown at Politico writes:

“Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option,” said Conrad, who has pushed an alternative proposal to create a network of consumer cooperatives, on Fox News Sunday. “There never have been. So to continue to chase that rabbit, I think, is just a wasted effort.”

Not to confuse things any further, just this morning, former Democratic Party Chairman Howlin’ Howard Dean said that meaningful health care reform just cannot happen without a direct government role.

Philip Elliot of the Associated Press writes:

Dean urged the Obama administration to stand by statements made early on in the debate in which it steadfastly insisted that such a public option was indispensable to genuine change, saying that Medicare and the Veterans Administration are “two very good programs that have been around for a long time.”

…

Dean argued that a public option is fair and said there must be such a choice in any genuine shake up of the existing system.

“You can’t really do health reform without it,” he said. Dean maintained that the health insurance industry has “put enormous pressure on patients and doctors” in recent years.

He called a direct government role “the entirety of health care reform. It isn’t the entirety of insurance reform … We shouldn’t spend $60 billion a year subsidizing the insurance industry.”

The President himself has started suggesting that the “public option” isn’t essential to his plan.

Oh, those wacky Dems.

The real shame is that while the mainstream media continues to obsess over so-called splits in the Republican Party, there is actually a much better – and far more interesting – story to cover over on the donkey’s side – if they’d only crawl out of the tank long enough to take a look.

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