Clinton Hits Obama For Wavering On Single-Payer Health Care

Pivoting off of one of the few policy spats in Monday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton hit Barack Obama on Tuesday for wavering on his support for a single-payer health care system. In a video put out on YouTube, the Clinton campaign contrasts portions of the debate - in which Obama says "I never said we should go and try to get single payer" - and a speech Obama gave to the AFL-CIO in 2003 - in which he says, "I happen to be a proponent of single-payer health care coverage."

In Monday's debate, Obama found himself flanked by his two primary opponents as the only candidate whose health care plan did not include a mandate. During the campaign the Illinois Democrat has argued that, if he were starting from scratch he would support a single payer system. In a profile of the Senator in the New Yorker this past spring he offered that, "a single-payer system-a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment-'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.'"

Comments

[caj]

JimK2 and All, the 'second term' quote was made in NV not SC by Hillary. Sorry!

Universal health care coverage by the end of my second term
" . . . You know, President Kennedy said in his inauguration that he wanted to have a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Well, I want to have universal health care coverage by the end of my second term.
Source: 2007 AFSCME Democratic primary debate in Carson City Nevada Feb 21, 2007

[brwnizofmine]

Obama needs to stay on message which he has a good one and his surrogates need to do the dirty work! Problem is, not enough surrogates are willing to stand up. Although I will say that, that guy on Chris Matthews last night, was right on the money. He called Bill Clinton right out and it's about time!

[plutorage]

Clintons are doing what liars do when they get desperate. They lie.

It is difficult to see how Clintons can get the delegates they need to claim victory before the convention if Obama continues closing the gap, state by state, even if he doesn't win the most votes before the convention. there are 1000 delegates (out of 4000) who are not chosen in the primaries so Hilary needs 2000 out of the 3000 delegates chosen in primaries to claim victory and if Obama continues getting within 5 % points of Hilary in each primary there is no way Clintons can win those 2000 delegates before the convention.

Obama needs to figure out how he can close the gap with Hilary in the Super Tuesday states. Much will depend on how the media covers an Obama win in South Carolina. If the African Americans don't turn out in record numbers for Obama in South Carolina, Obama could be toast on super Tuesday.

[JakeEasy]

HuffinPo has no shame. This reply is to a headline that pairs with this story and picture. The headline reads "Journalist says Clintons are Lying". There is no reply button for that story. You read the story and the journalist says a blogger is saying that the Clintons are lying.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Arianna's crew are trying to pin on the Clintons - that they use selective text to make a point that is not borne out in the whole story. So once again, if Clinton does it, she is playing nasty. When Arianna does it, well it's okay.

Shoddy, Arianna, Shoddy.

[DocTwain]

What an irony. They both should be championing single-payer health care and the working class.

Instead they champion and want to subsidize pernicious cartels.

[NicoleAnonymous]

Everyone brings up Reagan as if he was the best thing to ever happen in politics but he would never be able to get elected today.

The Republicans are so extreme they're way more to the right then he ever was.

[caj]

Didn't notice anyone commenting on the question,at the SC debate,about WHEN these 'insurance programs" of the Democratic candidates will be done.
And I paraphrase:
John Edwards - By the end of my FIRST term.
Barak Obama - By the end of my FIRST term.
Hillary Clinton - By the end of my SECOND term. (Caps mine)
Now, This statement supposes that Hillary is to have a second term. 2nd term presidents at the end of the 2nd term, really don't have much 'clout'

It appears that some folks "can't see the forest for the trees."

Looks like we'll get just exactly what we deserve.

[CannaWupass]

Hillary supporters...Get counseling­...repeati­ng the abusive and divisive practices of your abusers (Rove/Dela­y/Gingrich­) is sickening to watch and listen to.

Break the chain...Vote Obama

[LoadedDice]

Your "headline", that Obama has "wavered" on the issue of a single payer approach is almost as salacious as the "Clintonian" (i.e., 'smarmy') distortion of his position. Per Monday's debate, previous debates, and per his (unedited) statements of record: "If I were starting from scratch, if we didn't have a system in place, I probably would go with a single payer system." That hardly contradicts his (edited) position of 2003, posted by Hillary's path-dependent die hards, that a single payer system is what "I'd like to see."

To set the record straight--while recognizing that facts seldom cure path-dependency or more neurotic forms of denial:

Per the New Yorker (5/7/07): "'If you're starting from scratch,' Obama says, 'then a single-payer system'-a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment-'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition...would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.'"

Per the Concord Monitor (8/14/07): "At a roundtable with a handful of invited guests at Lindy's Diner in Keene, Obama said if he were starting from scratch, he would probably propose a single payer health care system, but because of existing infrastructure, he created a proposal to improve the current system."
Per the Obama campaign's website: "Here's the bottom line. If I were designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a single-payer system...But we're not designing a system from scratch...And when we had a healthcare forum before I set up my healthcare plan here in Iowa there was a lot of resistance to a single-payer system. ....Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system. For now, I just want to make sure every American is covered.
(http://iowa.barackobama.com/page/community/tag/Ames )

Enough said? ...Rational responses preferred.

[MisoPretty]

Obama should have known better that to even mention Reagan's name in any positive light. He is from Chicago and knows very well the extent of the economic and social structure's devastation by that Regressive president

[LoadedDice]

Your "headline", that Obama has "wavered" on the issue of a single payer approach is almost as salacious as the "Clintonian" (i.e., 'smarmy') distortion of his position. Per Monday's debate, previous debates, and per his (unedited) statements of record: "If I were starting from scratch, if we didn't have a system in place, I probably would go with a single payer system." That hardly contradicts his (edited) position of 2003, posted by Hillary's path-dependent die hards, that a single payer system is what "I'd like to see."

To set the record straight--while recognizing that facts seldom cure path-dependency or more neurotic forms of denial:

Per the New Yorker (5/7/07): "'If you're starting from scratch,' Obama says, 'then a single-payer system'-a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment-'would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition...would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.'"

Per the Concord Monitor (8/14/07): "At a roundtable with a handful of invited guests at Lindy's Diner in Keene, Obama said if he were starting from scratch, he would probably propose a single payer health care system, but because of existing infrastructure, he created a proposal to improve the current system."

Per the Obama campaign's website: "Here's the bottom line. If I were designing a system from scratch I would probably set up a single-payer system...But we're not designing a system from scratch...And when we had a healthcare forum before I set up my healthcare plan here in Iowa there was a lot of resistance to a single-payer system. ....Over time it may be that we end up transitioning to such a system. For now, I just want to make sure every American is covered..(http://iowa.barackobama.com/page/community/tag/Ames )

Enough said? ...Rational responses preferred.

[Gabrielle]

CLINTONS ARE SWIFBOATING OBAMA....

SEE MORE ABOUT THEM....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq8aopATYyw&feature=RecentlyWatched&page=1&t=t&f=b

[AnninCA]

Clinton's charge that Obama doesn't take responsibility for his words or his votes is right on the money.

Nevermind the truth squads, it shouldn't be hard to find many examples of exactly the same stuff.

I don't personally think it's lying.

I think that term is just press overblowing on both accounts. I DO think that Obama's wishy-washiness is the result of really not having thought about these issues. That's inexperience showing. He's just quickly making stuff up for the campaign without having spent his lifetime thinking it over.

[Arg]

Why do so many people continue to think that the Clintons' methods bring good results for the poor, the marginalized, the middle class? Hillary's failure with health-care reform in 1993 is a textbook example of how not to do things. And consider this extended passage by Bob Reich, a friend of Bill Clinton since 1969 and his labor secretary, about his welfare reforms (“Clinton's Leap in the Dark: How the plight of the "next-to poor" has distorted the reform of welfare,” by Robert B. Reich, American Prospect, 22 January 1999): “When during his 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton vowed to 'end welfare as we know it' by moving people 'from welfare to work,' he presumably did not have in mind the legislation that he signed into law in August 1996. The original idea had been to smooth the passage from welfare to work with guaranteed health care, child care, job training and a job paying enough to live on. The 1996 legislation contained none of these supports -- no health care or child care for people coming off welfare, no job training, no assurance of a job paying a living wage, nor, for that matter, of a job at any wage. In effect, what was dubbed welfare 'reform' merely ended the promise of help to the indigent and their children which Franklin D. Roosevelt had initiated more than sixty years before.... In short, being 'tough' on welfare was more important than being correct about welfare... Once elected, Clinton had two years in office with a Congress controlled by Democrats, but, revealingly, did not, during those years, forward to Congress a bill to move people from welfare to work with all the necessary supports, because he feared he could not justify a reform that would, in fact, cost more than than the welfare system it was intended to replace.”

[Arg]

Terrible headline: Obama hasn't wavered, he simply said once that, if starting from scratch, a single-payer system would be better. You're distorting the debate with this headline.