Matt Taibbi: Health Care "Public Option" Was Just for the Show

Matt Taibbi, a Rolling Stones magazine editor who has gained notoriety by attacking Goldman Sachs as "great American bubble machine", says Obama's "public option" was meant to be ditched from the beginning, a dog and pony show to placate the supporters. He thinks that there was a hand-shake deal from the beginning with the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry that the administration would initially push for "public option" but that the option would be quickly ditched ("so don't worry"?).

He suspects this (dropping the public option) is what they wanted to do all along. If they want to placate Republicans, dropping the public option wouldn't do the job, he argues, and shakes his head saying "it doesn't make sense...", that the White House and Democrats are kowtowing to Republicans for nothing.

Well, if he thinks the opposition is Republicans only, he's mistaken. At least he doesn't use the words like "evil-mongers", "un-American" or "right-wing wackos", as lots of left-leaning blogs like to call them.

He still allows a possibility that the White House says the public option will be dropped, but Republicans don't seem to change their minds, then the White House and Democrats can say "OK if that's the case we'll go it alone" and the public option will be on again.

Here's a clip from Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC.

(She gets her news from Daily Kos?? Oh boy.)

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