Wednesday, August 12, 2009

When Did Obama Change His Mind?

When Did Obama Change His Mind?

I pointed out a while back
that Obama was talking about how he wanted single payer health care in a speech he gave in 2003--and that I was concerned that his health care plan might turn out to be a Trojan Horse scheme for taking us to single payer. And one reader said that Obama had obviously changed his mind--a lot has happened since 2003. Well, okay. But it turns out that even in 2008, Obama was talking about using his health care plan to transition to single payer. And my source? It's Obama's campaign website:
If Obama Were Starting From Scratch, He Would Support A Single Payer System. Obama said, "Here's the bottom line. If I were designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a single-payer system...But we're not designing a system from scratch...And when we had a healthcare forum before I set up my healthcare plan here in Iowa there was a lot of resistance to a single-payer system. So what I believe is we should set up a series of choices....Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system. For now, I just want to make sure every American is covered...I don't want to wait for that perfect system...The one thing you should ask about the candidates though is who's gonna have the capacity to actually deliver on the change?...I believe I've got a better capacity to break the gridlock and attract both Independents and Republicans to work together." [http://iowa.barackobama.com/page/community/tag/Ames]
When even Obama was saying last year that this may be a transition plan to single payer--and because he recognized that there "was a lot of resistance" to it--well, let's just say that Obama must have changed his mind about single payer a lot more recently than anyone guessed.

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