July, 2009:

via As House and Senate Negotiate, Obama Fine-Tunes His Pitch | 44 | washingtonpost.com.

President Obama on Wednesday will take his plea for health-care reform to audiences in North Carolina and southwest Virginia, armed with a bullet-point-style message that his aides are hoping will be persuasive.

The re-tooled pitch highlights eight ways that, the White House says, health-care consumers would be treated better by insurance companies if reform efforts pass. It isn’t exactly prime sound-bite material — the catchiest title we could come up with is ‘Eight No’s, an Extension and a Guarantee,’ which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

But the message is the latest attempt by the White House to cut through dense policy discussions in a way that busy, distracted citizens can understand.

The message cuts through thick discussion – and totally looses sight of the public option. Go to the link above and read over the eight points. I’m not going to copy them here.

There is something in addition to this that is bothering me. In recent days, the President has been arguing for the public plan in a way that weakens the pro stance. He has been putting the public option out there as merely competition for insurance companies, rather than a viable system to provide care for those who cannot afford it. He is saying that the only reason to create a public health plan is to reign in excesses by insurance companies, to ensure that they cannot game the system. But that is not the real reason to create public health care for all, and it looks as though Obama is purposefully weakening the argument for a public plan.

I keep trying to remind myself and others that Obama is not a progressive Democrat. He never was. The image of Obama as a progressive is something that the progressive base has projected on him, something he admitted was happening in his book entitled Audacity of Hope, and this progressive thing is something that he has yet to attempt to dispel. President Obama is a pragmatic centrist. He is so pragmatic that he will accept a health care “reform” bill that only slaps the back of the hands of the insurance industry a little and then ignores the pleas of the uninsured – just to have compromise. No, sadly, Obama is not a progressive. We did not elect Dennis Kucinich. Hindsight shows us, in this fight, maybe we should have.

I wrote the White House a memo today with the contact form that is on the website. I sent the letter hoping it will make a difference however short this falls from his desk. Hoping. Here’s my memo:

I just read an article in the Washington Post entitled, “As House and Senate Negotiate, Obama Fine-Tunes His Pitch”. The article discusses eight points that President Obama will now use to fine tune his pitch for health care reform. The president is to unveil this new eight-point strategy today in Raleigh, NC.

I am extremely upset about these points he is using to fine tune his plan because not one of the eight points mentions a public plan. I am so angry I can bite through a nail. President Obama is going to loose his base if he gives away the public option, and I will be one of them. I have never given so much time and money to a presidential campaign in my life, (56 y/o) as I did to the Obama campaign. If he throws away our best chance at public health care to please the lobbyists, I will never support him again.

Please, Mr. President, stand tough. When the sun goes down today another 14,000 will loose access to health care. We must have a public option, not for competition in the insurance market place, but because poor people – immigrants, farm workers, day laborers – who can’t buy insurance get sick too.