It’s Town Hall attendees-1, Obama-0

It’s okay Senators and `Congress persons’, you can come out of hiding now: If Associated Press got it right, President Barack Obama’s administration is already signaling that it is ready to drop the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run health insurance as part of his feared health care proposal. “Facing mounting opposition to the overhaul, administration officials left open the chance for a compromise with Republicans that would include health insurance cooperatives. (Associated Press, Aug. 16, 2009). “Such a concession is likely to enrage his liberal supporters but could deliver Obama a much-needed win on a top domestic priority opposed by GOP lawmakers”. Obama has been pushing for the government to run a health insurance organization at breakneck speed ostensibly to help cover the nation’s almost 50 million uninsured, but Republicans continued to say, “No dice”. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that government alternative to private health insurance is “not the essential element” of the administration’s health care overhaul. The White House would be open to co-ops, she said, a sign that Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory on the showdown.

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Is that a white flag fluttering over 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW ? The victory here belongs to the scores of every day Americans who attended various Town Hall meetings and who kept the heat on even when White House bully tactics, including vicious name calling, was carried across the land by an Obama-fawning mainstream media. The new health care proposal, as drafted by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate’s budget committee, would receive federal startup money, but then would operate independently of the government. It would be incumbent upon the co-ops to maintain the same financial reserves that private companies are required to keep to handle unexpectedly high claims. Sen. Richard Shelby, (R-Ala.) said Obama’s team is making a political calculation and going the co-op route as “a step away from the government takeover of the health care system” that the GOP has driven home. Did it make anyone else laugh out loud that Obama wrote an editorial in today’s New York Times, saying that political maneuvers should be excluded from the debate? “In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain,” he wrote. “But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary--truly risky--is the prospect of doing nothing,” he wrote. Now that John Q. Public has forced the Dems back to the drawing board on health care overhaul, let’s hope they have the same influence over the forced HiN1 innoculations coming in October in a plan that some see as a way for Obama’s crazy friends at the United Nations to thin out the masses. Meanwhile, Obama can avail himself of lessons on “How to Walk on Water” from the same Town Hall attendees who turned back the tide.

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