Obama explains why there is no public option in Obamacare

[thesquanderer]

123. Two different things...

re: "the absence of a/the Public Option (let alone, single payer) was not a big enough issue to have them [vote people out] ... i.e., what President Obama said"

that's not equivalent to being able to say that people didn't want it (i.e. Obama being right). There are a whole lot of things people want, even things they want very much... that doesn't mean there are tons of people willing to vote people out over them, over single issues, regardless of what other candidates are available... Basically I'm just disagreeing with the proposition that you seemed to be putting forth, that because congress was largely re-elected, that means most people agreed with the president's POV. I don't think you can say that about the public option or about any single issue or any single element of any single issue. As to that last point, I mean, even if you wanted to "send a signal," who is to say, if you vote someone out, are you voting them out because you objected to the ACA? Or did you like the ACA but objected to the lack of the public option? Or was it about something else entirely? Really, especially outside of any kind of big organized campaign, you rarely get much sense of this kind of thing. In short, a vote for your congressperson that year did not equate to a vote in favor of killing the public option, I think that's silly. You could easily have opposed the PO and still vote for the person for other things that you liked or because you thought the alternative candidate was worse, etc. So to suggest, "hey, the President and Congress were re-elected, so I guess they were right that nobody cared about the PO" is a big stretch to me!

Good question about the details of the PO proposal that was being floated at the time. I don't remember the details, but once someone posted about it here, it definitely rang a bell, that the public option being discussed would not be something someone could choose if they got insurance through their job. And I guess it makes sense because, as a rule, isn't it pretty much always the case that the employee can't choose their insurance plan other than choosing from what the employer chooses to make available? So the PO could only be a choice if the employer permitted it. Beyond that, there are still differences between plans offered to businesses vs. individuals. I don't remember seeing anything about the proposed PO being offered to businesses, either. So I'm not even certain it was an option for businesses. At any rate, I don't think it would have been a requirement! But maybe someone else can remember the details better than I.