Some congressional liberals are preparing for a revolt against President Obama’s health care reform. Matt Kibbe, President and CEO of FreedomWorks, who recently spoke at The Heritage Foundation’s bloggers briefing, speculates that the public-option may have been a red-herring all along for the administration. The difficulty today however, is in attempting to figure out what exactly the president is attempting this time around—the president who ran on the platform of transparency and unity, not beholden to big business.
“There are several possibilities,” Kibbe conjectured on the unraveling events on Capitol Hill in which administration officials voiced support for a bill without the public option. More recently, however Obama voiced his support for keeping it in the bill.. “The public-option may be bait—have everyone focus on that, attack that, and eventually settle on something else, such as the Co-Op.”
Whereas government-sponsored Cooperative is also being advocated under the umbrella of “competition” for private insurance companies, many warn against the creation of the health care version of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Though a Co-Op need not be harmful and corrosive, a governmentt-sponsored Co-Op will allow the government to subtly squeeze out the competition by making it harder for people to purchase the plan best-suited for them.
Kibbe argued that conservatives should refrain from complacency and self-satisfaction. “We need to be careful not to declare victory when the administration gives up on the public option because they will come back with something just as pernicious and corrupting,” Kibbe said.
Obama’s administration has preemptively played the “fear-mongering” and “disinformation”-cards throughout their crusade for reform. The former Republican majority leader and head of FreedomWorks lay forth his own take on the situation: “In September or October there will be a hyped up outbreak of the swine-flu which they’ll say is as bad as the bubonic plague to score the bed-wetters (who span both parties) to vote for reform,” he said, speaking of his predicted autumn fear-campaign.
“One big distortion is that free-market conservatives are happy with the status-quo. 55 cents of every dollar spent on health care is spent by the government,” Kibbe said, alluding to the inefficient and corrupt government-run systems such as Medicare and Medicaid. “Yes, be aggressive at in getting your question across, in holding officials accountable at town halls. But never shout, never push, or let the accusations escalate.”
Extrapolating upon the recent actions by the none-too-transparent “transparency” President, he asserted that “Obama has been holding secret, closed-door meetings with pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies. Big Pharma likes it.”
“The health industry is very excited about a government-mandate to buy their product.”
One can only speculate what has been going on in the closed-door meetings, but a deal is presumably in the works.
“Imagine if the government, to stop hunger, mandated everyone eat a Big-Mac everyday for lunch. Do you think McDonald’s would be in favor of that? Do you think they’d have hundreds of lobbyists fighting for it?”
“Now, I understand the Big-Mac analogy, and it’s very good,” an individual said to Kibbe. “But isn’t that antithetical to everything we’ve been hearing? That the public-option would be a death-sentence for them as everyone would inevitably be forced to adopt the government-run plan?”
“This goes back to the possible public-option head-fake, where the government mandates everyone purchase certain insurance,” Kibbe replied. “Millions of Americans, most notably young voters who choose against purchasing insurance would be forced to purchase expensive, unnecessary, government-subsidized Cadillac insurance plans,” he argued.
FreedomWorks has been working in alliance with many Tea Party organizers and will be holding the March on Washington on September 12th. “We have never paid or bussed anyone to town halls or anything else. And on September 12th we will be shutting down the streets, rightfully and legally, as thousands join us down Pennsylvania Ave; à la Martin Luther King Jr,” said Kibbe.
Information about the March on Washington can be found at 912dc.org.
Anthony Kang is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
