Did the Obama campaign plan from the beginning to craft a "healthcare plan" that failed Americans on several key issues for some obscure reason which only they know?
I think that a careful reading of well informed commentaries on both primary and Presidential candidate Obama's positions will show that not only have members of his staff admitted that if the goal was affordably covering people when they actually got sick, and not just when they were healthy, that stated goal was basically impossible under their model, but also not once has he, personally allowed these issues to get actually addressed in legislation or given real, tangible support (not just lip service, with ambiguous wording) to their actually being addressed for all Americans.
The two issues are: Affordable healthcare guarantees for the chronically ill and Job Lock.
Affordable healthcare guarantees for the chronically ill, even those who have incomes above some arbitrary percentage of the poverty line (in other words, a functional healthcare plan that actually spreads the risk around to everyone, rather than shifting risks and costs to them, and punishing people for being sick, adding to their problems immensely)
There has never been any kind of support from the White House for the real gains in affordability we need except for the poorest Americans, and even they come with a number of serious, hidden traps, making WH policies punitive - in other words, designed to make "HCR" into a welfare program that means tests affordable health care- and suddenly throws families to the wolves when they make one dollar above the cutoff.
Also, any sick person who manages to pay all their bills who still claims their income is low will become suspected of cheating. Because like most forms of government assistance, the false-hope HCR fails to acknowledge important facts like the fundamental unaffordable nature of health care in the last decade, and because of that fundamental lie, and a profound level of underfunding, it inevitably becomes a system that is designed to trip its hapless users up.
That is clearly counter productive to the economy, because chronically ill people with any kind of health condition will find that paradoxically, they absolutely cannot make more money or they will suddenly expose their entire families to very likely bankruptcy. This is the inevitable result of embracing a model that depends on using vastly increased unaffordable fees to intentionally trip up sick people for its profitability (or in the case of the now gone PO, break-even ability)
Job lock The Obama administrations' deceptive and superficial approach always implies some eventual availability of some kind of affordable healthcare solution for people who are self employed or unemployed, (obviously, they have to offer hope, because otherwise, people would demand a real solution that they knew worked)
BUT then they - as we have seen, often at the last minute, sneakily switch some small detail or drop some program, with the effect that the end result is unworkable for that subset of people who need a real solution. They have proven by this activity that they will never willingly offer those protections.
This not only hurts our economy because people never reach their earning potential before they get laid off for being too old and too expensive to insure. It is the exact opposite of single payers stimulus as it causes a national far reaching diminuation in all of our investments in ourselves and our nation by forcing millions of those over 35 or 40 into de-facto early retirement and also crippling the ability of younger Americans to change jobs or start companies.
In a sense, its a system designed to maximize profits for the rich at the expense of the poor, without their having any recourse, or any health care to help them if they get sick after their usefulness has been declared over. Its sort of like a return to slavery or indentured servitude, in that it unnaturally breaks the free market freedoms of a free market, by putting people into inescapable debt. Making it much more coercive.
Its the human resources equivalent of the administration's efforts to block Americans from affordable prescription drug importation.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world, increasingly healthier and better educated, is surging ahead.
I think that a look at the issues that only saw the light at the end of the primaries, when the two candidates were running neck and neck in popular votes, shows the issues clearly.
Clinton charged that Obama's plan would leave millions of people without insurance (actually, she was overkind and IMO, underestimated the number who would be unable to buy it, and she also made a big mistake by not mentioning that even people who have insurance often can't get decent care, and when they do get it, the uncovered costs can easily bankrupt them.)
So, she claimed that Obama's plan would leave at least 15 million people without insurance. (its important to state here now that the amounts of subsidies that were being discussed were around 50% higher than they are now, $120 billion a year, rather than 80, so that works out to around $400 per American.
Experts basically agreed. "If people aren't required by law to buy insurance, many won't".
It was also discussed then that all three Democratic candidates wanted to bar insurance companies from rejecting sick people or charging them more. "But it is hard to require companies to insure expensive sick people if they aren't guaranteed that cheap healthy people will balance them out."
In those last days of the primaries, charges flew back and forth. the Obama campaign claimed in mailers that their healthcare plan was "universal" without defining what that meant. The Clinton campaign angrily charged that Obama's plan betrayed the Democratic principle of universal coverage. Her campaign demanded that he stop claims that "his plan covers everyone."
Obama responded not by refuting her charge, but by saying that she was arguing about the affordability isue "because she was losing ground in the polls". But his advisers didn't dispute her central charge. Rather, they claimed Mrs. Clinton's plan would also leave millions without coverage.
Obama financial adviser Austan Goolsbee argued that if Clinton's health plan was enacted, "she would still have to waive the mandate for millions of people". That is because, he said, "there isn't enough money for subsidies to make health insurance affordable enough for people to buy it". (under the insurance-centric system they both wanted to preserve, even though it cripples our nation.)
"You can't put in a mandate until health care is affordable," Goolsbee then said. He then predicted that like an Obama administration, a Clinton administration would wind up exempting 20% of the uninsured because of the high cost.
Obama has also repeatedly, obviously, even when asked directly, avoided even discussing the problems of underinsurance, job lock, and insurance-cost driven job losses and layoffs. Its as if the problem didn't exist to him. But, by his behavior of evasion, he shows that he does know it exists and he does not want to change it.
Many will say, Okay, Obama is the president, but he doesn't write the laws, he's just the chief executive..
A series on the PNHP web site looks at the people who thought up the whole pubic option thing, There's some interesting content here, that is worth reading about the allegedly scientific methods that were used to justify 'public option'. (which is basically a variation of the high risk pools that are used to preserve a failing insurance model by creating a way for well to do people who are chronically ill to get insurance. (Even though the premiums are high, they still needs substantial subsidies, much more than $4 a year per American)
Its considered bad form in the scientific community to announce results before research is done..more on that here..
The rest of the six part series on the PNHP web site is very good too.. for example sections about citizen juries andpolls that show that 60-70% of all americans want medicare for all.