General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am so utterly sick of this Third Way shit. [View all]joshcryer
(62,265 posts)He couldn't have predicted that Scott Brown would be seated thus forcing him to dump the public option in order to get "bi-partisan" support.
Had Ted Kennedy lived a little longer we would probably have the public option plus a mandate.
The mandate was necessary because all CBO projections without the mandate showed costs of health care going out of the roof.
Obama could not have those cost projections in his 2012 political campaign ads. The public option had to be the sacrifice.
I call it naivety, as I think he thought he could get by with both and which is why he made such strong proclamations about the public option.
Had he been for both he could've argued for both and likely got both, but because so much time was spent 1) getting the mandate put in there and 2) wrangling over the public option during that time (death panels, anyone?), there was no time to get it passed while Kennedy was still alive.