Contra to the diary held by Willa Rogers, Obama isn't shirking away from his public plan. In fact, he's trying to go into the Lion's Den tomorrow, to the AMA, to get support for it.
Obama goes to AMA
Obama's going to try to convince a VERY skeptical audience, which has often shirked away from reform for years and is going to make clear what a public plan does and doesn't do to everyone there. If he's going to give up on the public plan he certainly seems to be going in the wrong direction.
President Barack Obama will attempt to convince a skeptical American Medical Association Monday to drop its resistance to the most controversial element of his health reform effort, a government insurance plan.
In an address to the group's annual meeting in Chicago, Obama will pitch the public insurance plan as a necessary competitor to private insurers, and a tool to ensure choice and lower costs for consumers.
Given its historic resistance to major reform efforts, the AMA would be a tough crowd under normal circumstances. But in pushing the public plan, Obama is looking to persuade a constituency already distrustful of the government's role in health care that a government insurance program won't be as objectionable as they imagine.
"The president will be clear about what a public option does and doesn't mean for patients, physicians, and our broader health care system," according to an outline of the speech provided Sunday by the administration.
The President knows that they don't have a lot of power on capitol hill, as many diarists here have noted but that they have the power of "validating" any form that Obama could come up with.
The group has been participating in the talks on Capitol Hill and at the White House. Although the AMA is not considered as powerful on the Hill as it once was, supporters of Obama's reform effort view physicians as key "validators" with the ability to influence voters on the grassroots level.
Obama will tell the AMA that a system overhaul cannot wait "another year or another administration," the administration wrote in its outline.
"The President will be clear that reform is the single most important thing we can do for America's long-term fiscal health," the outline stated. "He'll stress that as a nation we spend too much and get too little in return, incurring massive costs that are crushing businesses and families and on leading us toward exploding deficits, weaker benefits, and millions more Americans losing coverage.
"The president will thank the AMA for their leadership in promoting comprehensive reform, and he'll pledge to work with AMA to achieve reform that works for everyone," the outline stated.
This directly refutes the diary above and shows that while Obama was silent for awhile, if Obama gives up on the public plan now, others would be SERIOUSLY outraged about it.
Further, let me make something I've noticed on blogs and articles regarding votes in the Senate. Landrieu, Nelson and others who vote against Obama's healthcare plan may be able to vote against the plan without killing the plan. The key question which is missed by basically everyone, is not how they would vote on the issue. For that, you need a simple majority. There needs to be 60 votes for cloture. The correct question to be asked is how they would vote on cloture? I guarantee you, NO democrat is going to vote against cloture on healthcare.