He campaigned on it about as much as Hillary did... In other words, it was buried in fine print on their respective web sites, with barely any mention in public.

The first I herd that Hillary had a public option in her plan was at this site, when someone told me to check out here site... I certainly never heard her mention it once publicly during the campaign.

Instead of honestly admitting that the bill working its way through Congress does not fully meet his campaign promises, Obama has decided the proper strategy is to just lie to the American people:

   [Obama] said the Senate legislation accomplishes "95 percent" of what he called for during his 2008 presidential campaign and in his September speech to a joint session of Congress on the need for health-care reform.
    ...
    Obama said the public option "has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right." But, he added, "I didn't campaign on the public option."

This is just a set of bald-faced lies, as I demonstrated in detail earlier this week.

The public option was clearly part of his campaign plan. His campaign plan also promised a national exchange, drug re-importation, an employer mandate, direct Medicare drug price negotiations, to let you keep your current plan if you like it, and to bring down health care costs by $2,500 per year for a family.

The Senate bill will do none of these things.

Obama did promise to not do two very important things with health care reform. He promised to not include an individual mandate and not tax employer-provided health insurance benefits.

This Senate bill breaks both of those promises.

This health care reform fight already made Obama look like a weak leader and a defender of the corporate lobbyists.

Now, it has also made him a liar-one who is discrediting the widely acknowledge need for much greater reform. For all the people in the "we will fix it later" crowd, please notice Obama is not on your side. He thinks this reform bill is just fine as it is.

[Ed. Note: Dave has more evidence of Candidate/President Obama's presto-change-o on "Change."]

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12 22/obama-thinks-lying-to-the-american-p eople-is-the-best-strategy

and it's still on the health care page of Organizing for America's site:

        
Quality, Affordable Choices
If You Don't Have Insurance, the Obama Plan:

   * Creates a new insurance marketplace -- the Exchange -- that allows people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy insurance at competitive prices.
    * Provides new tax credits to help people buy insurance.
    * Provides small businesses tax credits and affordable options for covering employees.
    * Offers a public health insurance option to provide the uninsured and those who can't find affordable coverage with a real choice.
    * Immediately offers new, low-cost coverage through a national "high risk" pool to protect people with preexisting conditions from financial ruin until the new Exchange is created.

Obama didn't want the PO in the first place.

If he wanted the PO, you don't have that as your first negotiating offer. Instead, you trott out single-payer first, so you have some room to move down and still get a PO.

That is negotiation 101. It's not a secret.

SO there's 2 possibilities here:

1) Obama is incompetent when it comes to stuff like negotiations

2) Obama didn't want the PO

I don't think Obama is incompetent.

The question is who.

As I wrote above, it is a whopper of a lie. Tom P at Daily Kos does the necessary due diligence from prior reports to illustrate why that is the case:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1 2/22/818090/-President-Obama:-I-Didnt-Ca mpaign-on-the-Public-Option.-

That's pretty bad.  Of course he campaigned on it.

What are his convictions?

Okay, two.

What is he willing fight for?

The who is obvious. It's corporations.

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2009/12 21/senate-health-care-bill-is-built-on- obamas-broken-promises

The following is a list of all the promises broken:

Promise:

   Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year.

The CBO has concluded that premiums for employer-provided insurance will not drop by anything close to $2,500 per year. Without reforms like drug re-importation, direct government drug price negotiations, a robust public option, or a central provider reimbursement negotiator, I see no way this reduction can happen with the Senate bill.

The Senate bill also breaks the key promise that "you can keep the insurance you have." The excise tax in the Senate bill is designed to make your health insurance worse. It will force your employer to select plans with less coverage and higher co-pays.

If you are one of the roughly 30 million Americans in 2016 who's insurance will be lessened because of the excise tax, your current health insurance will definitely change for the worse.

Obama attacked John McCain throughout the campaign because his plan would tax your health insurance benefits. Now Obama is going back on his key distinction from John McCain by promoting a bill that does in fact tax your health insurance benefits.
_____-

Promise:

   Barack Obama and Joe Biden's new National Health Insurance Exchange will also help increase competition by insurers.

The Senate bill will use state-based exchanges. This is not some minor technical distinction. By using state-based exchanges, it relies on state insurance commissioners to enforce the new regulations.

State insurance commissioners do not have a good track record policing the insurance companies. They often lack the power, funding, or will to hold them accountable. Regulation without strong enforcement is meaningless.
______

Promise:

   Allow consumers to import safe drugs from other countries. The second-fastest growing type of health expenses is prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical companies should profit when their research and development results in a groundbreaking new drug.

But some companies are exploiting Americans by dramatically overcharging U.S. consumers. These companies are selling the exact same drugs in Europe and Canada but charging Americans a 67 percent premium. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S.

This is a pure broken promise. Obama traded it away to PhRMA as part of a secret backroom deal (which itself breaks another promise: to make all negotiations public on C-SPAN). He actively worked to kill drug re-importation when it had a real chance of being added to the bill.
______

Promise:

   Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices. The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act bans the government from negotiating down the prices of prescription drugs, even though the Department of Veterans Affairs' negotiation of prescription drug prices with drug companies has garnered significant savings for taxpayers.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden will repeal the ban on direct negotiation with drug companies and use the resulting savings, which could be as high as $30 billion, to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality.

Again, this is another broken promise that was part of Obama's secret sweetheart deal with PhRMA.
______

Promise:

   Through the Exchange, any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan... The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and meet the same standards for quality and efficiency.

There is no public option in the Senate bill. In the health care system that Obama promise the public option was not just some "small sliver." It was going to be the benchmark against which all private plans would need to be measured.
_____

Promise:

   Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles. Participants will be charged fair premiums and minimal co-pays for deductibles for preventive services.

I do not believe the subsidized premiums are affordable and the subsidies are only for the 70% actuarial plans. Plans with this low of an actuarial will likely have high co-pays and deductibles.
________

Promise:

   EMPLOYER CONTRIBUTION. Large employers that do not offer meaningful coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees will be required to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of the national plan. Small businesses will be exempt from this requirement.

The Senate bill does not have a real employer mandate based on payroll. It only has a small "free rider" provision. Because of the lack of a real employer mandate, the amount of employer-provided coverage will drop by $5 million.

Other promises not part of the official campaign plan document:

During the 2008 primary campaign, Obama really pushed that a key distinction between Hillary Clinton and himself was that he promised not to include an individual mandate in his reform package. This bill has an individual mandate.

Obama attacked John McCain for planning to tax health insurance benefits. This bill taxes employer provide benefits.

Candidate Obama promised to make the negotiations public, and, clearly, that did not happen.
________

To recap: the Senate bill taxes benefits and will result in millions of Americans' insurance plans changing for the worse. It is not expected to bring down premiums by $2,500 a year.

There is an individual mandate forcing you to buy private health insurance, but no real employer mandate.

The subsidies will be insufficient to truly make insurance affordable.

It does not create a national exchange or a public option.

It does not allow for drug re-importation or direct drug price negotiations by Medicare. All the negotiations were conducted in secret, and clearly to the detriment of the American consumer.

It is a massive rollback of women's reproductive rights, something Obama promised to defend vigorously.

These are not minor changes. These are core promises of the Obama campaign.

This Senate health care reform bill is nothing like what Obama campaigned on.

Obama's two biggest campaign promises about health care reform-that he repeated over and over again (no individual mandate and no taxes on employer-provided heath insurance)-were both completely broken.

If Ezra Klein wants to argue this is still a good bill, he has that right, but he should not try to re-write history. I studied Obama's campaign promises closely during the campaign, and this is nothing like the health care reform he promised. He did almost everything he promised he would not do, and he kept almost nothing of his most progressive promises to stand up to the powerful industry lobbies.

If he just would admit that this was not something that was important to him, I would at least respect that. I would remain neutral if he simply just moved on and spun it as moving on. But, what I don't find accept is the lying he has been doing not just with this, but on how this bill produces cost containment. This is the second whopper in as many weeks he has put out there on this subject. I don't see the point of telling these whoppers. Steve M above may be right that no one cares right now, but this sort of behavior eventually comes back to bite administrations in the ass. Eventually , if he keeps this up, and it becomes widely known- it cripples not just as administration, but his future chances in 2012 and the party in general. Right now, this is small, but he needs people telling him to telling these whoopers is not good.

OMG!

You mean we won't all be able to enroll in the same plan that Senator Obama was able to enroll in as a member of Congress?

Ya don't say!!???

LOL!

Obama supporters were drinking the kool-aide.

I find it hilarious that is us pragmatic Clinton supports are now the one defending Obama from the Obamamaniacs.

.... Hey Obamamaniacs give us all a good laugh and tell us there isn't "a dimes worth of difference" between Obama and McCain.

Sheesh.   Sometimes I admire Republicans.   At least they wouldn't cave on their guy 11 months in.

I guess I'm not entirely crazy...

"An examination of approximately 200 newspaper articles from the campaign, as well as debate transcripts and public speeches shows that Obama spoke remarkably infrequently about creating a government-run insurance program. Indeed, when he initially outlined his health care proposals during a speech before the University of Iowa on March 29, 2007, he described setting up a system that resembles the current Senate compromise - in which private insurers would operate in a non-profit entity that was regulated heavily by a government entity....

It also, however, seems clear that the philosophical attachment of the candidate to the issue was limited. Obama would discuss the public option more frequently once he took office. But on the trail he almost always highlighted other elements of his health care agenda first. As one progressive activist who has worked on health care reform for the past year put it:

"What I think [Obama's] point was [in making his statement to the Washington Post], is true. The public option was not his number one talking point on the trail. Hell, it wasn't even number 12. The public option didn't become the central part of health care reform until after [he entered the White House]."
"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22 /did-obama-campaign-on-the_n_401204.html

 Tell me a lie. Tell me you don't hate Obama.

http://workinprogress.firedoglake.com/20 09/12/22/nurses-union-senate-bill-isnt-r eal-health-reform/

The National Nurses United, a brand new union created earlier this month and the largest professional group of nurses in the country, officially opposes the Senate health care bill.  NNU, a member of the AFL-CIO, slammed the Senate bill as a giveaway to the insurance industry that falls far short of real reform.

   National Nurses United, the nation's largest registered nurses union and professional organization, declared on Tuesday that the Senate health care bill gives away too much to insurance companies and "fails to meet the test of true health care reform."

   "It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the health care crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry," said co-president Karen Higgins in a statement.

   "Sadly, we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true health care reform, guaranteeing high quality, cost effective care for all Americans, and instead are further locking into place a system that entrenches the chokehold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health. If this bill passes, the industry will become more powerful and could be beyond the reach of reform for generations," she added.

NNU is the first major union to flat-out oppose the Senate's health care bill.  While the union supports a single-payer health care system - indeed, at least one of its founding unions, the California Nurses Association, has a long history of fighting for single payer - it tied its opposition of the bill to 10 major shortfalls that will likely appear in the final bill.  Several of their points of opposition echo FDL's 10 reasons to vote against the senate bill.

   1. The individual mandate forcing all those without coverage to buy private insurance, with insufficient cost controls on skyrocketing premiums and other insurance costs.

   2. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.

   3. An affordability mirage. Congressional Budget Office estimates say a family of four with a household income of $54,000 would be expected to pay 17 percent of their income, $9,000, on healthcare exposing too many families to grave financial risk.

   4. The excise tax on comprehensive insurance plans which will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies, especially as more plans are subject to the tax every year due to the lack of adequate price controls. A Towers-Perrin survey in September found 30 percent of employers said they would reduce employment if their health costs go up, 86 percent said they'd pass the higher costs to their employees.

   5. Major loopholes in the insurance reforms that promise bans on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and no cancellations for sickness.

   7. Inadequate limits on drug prices, especially after Senate rejection of an amendment, to protect a White House deal with pharmaceutical giants, allowing pharmacies and wholesalers to import lower-cost drugs.

   9. Reduced reproductive rights for women.

 10. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; healthcare remains a privilege, not a right.

"Desperation to pass a bill, regardless of its flaws, has made the White House and Congress subject to the worst political extortion and new, crippling concessions every day," Burger said.

"NNU and nurses will continue to work with the thousands of grassroots activists across the nation to campaign for the best reform, which would be to expand Medicare to cover everyone, the same type of system working more effectively in every other industrial country. The day of that reform will come," said Ross.

I know that this isn't exactly a hotbed of Obama support these days. I, as an ardent supporter of Obama, will even admit that this sucks pretty badly. I am unhappy.

But what I want to know is this- where is the outrage directed at Harry Reid. Where is the outrage directed at Baucus, or Nelson, or Leiberman?

I am angry, and I am disillusioned. I worked HARD last year to get this guy elected. I got fired by the SEIU the day after Election Day (as did everyone else on my project...)AND I believed that we were turning things around...

Yes, Obama is partly to blame. But where is the indignation at every other Democrat who turned their back on us? Obama is not in the Senate anymore...and this is the Senate Bill and it sucks. Can we start yelling at the Senators who made this happen yet?

I thought Obama was a solid progressive, the evidence so far suggests otherwise.

This centrist positioning by Obama doesn't seem to be working. Not a single Republican Senator came onboard, Democratic poll numbers are sinking and the right-wing is mad as hell (not to mention the left).  

I've seen a few things in the media wondering where Obama's movement has gone. I think the question should be is where has the movement's Obama gone?

Yes, Obama was misleading during the campaign about the public option and many other progressive issues. But he was transparent about it, most Democrats saw he was not being straight and did not vote for him in the primaries.

The public option he proposed was limited to people not otherwise covered and a small set of small businesses. It was designed not to compete with private insurance, unlike Edwards' and Clinton's public options, which were explicitly designed to constrain private insurance companies by competing with them. It was so small that it was clearly designed to be jettisoned.

Some low information voters may feel betrayed by the legislation we have, and by Obama's role in crafting that legislation. But most voters, and especially usual mid-term voters, are not low information voters and knew what to expect from Obama, they will appreciate the historic nature of this legislation. So I do not think Obama will pay a political price next year for this pivot. The noise on the blogs is the same noise Obama ignored as he racked up wins during the primaries.

The Liar in Chief, and his apologists!