Obama Piddles Away the Public's Options | Black Agenda Report

Obama Piddles Away the Public's Options

Glen Ford, BAR executive editor

19 Aug 2009

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.

“It's all over but the funeral.” In abandoning the “public option,” President Obama has relinquished all claim as champion of health care reform, the content of which he first diluted and ultimately bargained away entirely. The forces of reaction, which were disorganized and on the defensive when Obama entered office, have been vastly strengthened by the president's “duplicitous backroom deals and back-stabbing of his most loyal supporters.”

Obama Piddles Away the Public's Options

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“Obama seems to believe he can salvage a bill – any bill – and scribble the word “reform” on it.”

It became crystal clear that the insurance companies had prevailed in President Obama's health care fiasco the moment the White House coined the term “public option.” Plainly, a public alternative to private health insurance was always merely an option – just another bargaining chip in Obama's private and oh-so-friendly negotiations with the rich and ruthless. Now it's all over but the funeral.

The death of Obama's health care project was both ignominious and foreordained. This is what comes from duplicitous backroom deals and back-stabbing of one's most loyal supporters. What remains of the legislative mish-mash birthed by Obama and his congressional co-conspirators, are corporate bills. That's why the drug barons are spending $150 million to advertise for Obama's fraudulent brand of health care reform. And, although the insurance industry continues to publicly oppose the hollow shell that Obama's project has become, at this stage in the game they win whichever way the wind blows. If Obama's hot air balloon fully deflates, the health insurance companies will continue to enjoy the status quo they have so carefully engineered over the years. But if a bill emerges with provisions that force everyone to buy private insurance, the health care racketeers will add millions of new, subsidized customers.

“Obama gave everything away before the negotiations even began.”

Obama signaled that he is willing to engage in further compromise with his corporate friends, the guys whose company and confidence he so highly prized at White House health care forums, venues where single-payer advocates were not welcome. The problem is, Obama gave everything away before the negotiations even began. Now he has nothing left to trade, and not enough forces to rearrange the battlefield, having demobilized and dismissed the Left in favor of corporate Democrats like himself. Still, Obama seems to believe he can salvage a bill – any bill – and scribble the word “reform” on it.

He has been reduced to the politics of semantics. He invites his election day supporters to leap into the river with him as he grasps at “slivers” and straws and calls them “reform.” Obama will describe passage of any legislation with the word reform attached to it, a victory. But his paper victory will represent a lasting defeat for real health care reform, which will have been discredited in the eyes of the public – for how long, no one can say.

But the damage is even more horrific. Obama has succeeded in wounding Medicare – and Medicaid and veterans health care and Social Security – more grievously than the Republicans could have dreamed of on their own. He entered office spreading hysteria about the cost of Medicare and other so-called “entitlements.” Now his little boat is sinking, but the Republicans have been reinforced in their age-old battle to privatize what's left of the public sphere. In the short space of 7 months, Obama has piddled and bargained away huge regions of the public's “options.”

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

More Stories

Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Introduction to Glen Ford's "The Black Agenda"
27 Jul 2022
The compilation of Glen Ford's work, "The Black Agenda" was published by OR Books posthumously. In the introduction he recounted his life story and career.
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Last Moyo’s Book, “The Decolonial Turn in Media Studies in Africa and the Global South”
27 Jul 2022
This week’s featured author is Last Moyo. Moyo lectures in the Department of Communications and Multimedia Design at the American University, Nigeria. His book is The Decolonial Turn in Media Studies…
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Karen Jaime’s Book, “The Queer Nuyorican”
27 Jul 2022
This week’s featured author is Karen Jaime. Jaime is Assistant Professor of Performing and Media Arts and Latina/o Studies at Cornell University. Jaime’s book is The Queer Nuyorican: Racialized…
Tanupriya Singh
Ghana’s Unions and Left Reject Bailout Talks with the IMF as Economic Crisis Spirals
27 Jul 2022
Ghana has initiated talks with the International Monetary Fund to seek a potential bailout amid a major economic crisis. This has been rejected by the Socialist Movement of Ghana and trade unions who…
Alec Karakatsanis
Police Departments Spend Vast Sums of Money Creating “Copaganda”
27 Jul 2022
US police departments spend tens of millions of dollars every year to manipulate the news, flooding the discourse with “copaganda.” These aggressive tactics give the public a distorted view of what…