Health care: No ‘public option’?

What it means if the Obama team is backing away from government-run competition to private insurance

With Democrats like these, “who needs Republicans?” said Alan Colmes in Liberaland. The Obama administration is signaling its willingness to neuter health-care reform legislation by abandoning the government-run public option to private insurance. That’s not “compromise”—the public option itself was a compromise on single-payer health care—it’s Obama and the Democrats letting the GOP and conservative Blue Dog Democrats “railroad them.”

Don’t believe “the Sunday spin” on this “alleged ‘retreat’ from the Obamacare public option,” said conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. Recent White House comments aren’t a “white flag,” but a “trial balloon to measure the potential nutroots backlash versus the potential Senate pick-ups.” Watch: Obama will try to slip the provision into the final bill.

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