Published: 2009-09-14 23:09:06
Author: Dan Balz | Washington Post | August 19, 2009
It is now clear that the Obama administration did not intend to spark a firestorm of criticism over the public option. A team noted for its discipline during the campaign found itself unexpectedly on the defensive this week trying to explain the inexplicable.
As Obama once said, words matter. When the president, in his weekly radio address on July 18, used the words "must include" in reference to the public insurance option and a final health care package, liberal Democratic lawmakers and legions of Obama's grassroots supporters took him seriously.
They took him seriously because even as the main message on health care shifted from cost containment to attacking insurance companies, the public option remained part of the administration's rhetorical arguments. In both cases, the public option seemed a central weapon to achieve those goals.
When Obama's advisers focused on constraining costs, they pointed to a public option as a way to assure stiff competition for private insurers. A government-run insurance option, they said, would force the insurance companies to find ways to reduce the costs of their own coverage packages.
When administration officials found that the cost-containment message wasn't working as well as hoped, they switched and went after the insurance companies more directly. Opponents of the insurance industry viewed the public option as an the ideal alternative to private insurance and the administration did nothing to dissuade them of that belief. As a result, the public option assumed greater significance in the debate.
Never mind that, at the same time all this was taking place, some administration officials and their legislative allies were sending quiet signals that the public option could be bargained away at the end of the legislative process. Though never explicit, it was widely assumed that the public option was expendable.
At that point in the debate, the administration was most concerned about unrest among Blue Dog Democrats in the House and remained hopeful that some bipartisan consensus could be achieved in the Senate. Giving away the public option seemed an easy move in the complex legislative strategy whose bottom line was to enact something.