This op-ed in the LA Times is awfully silly:

I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding since that election in 2008, during which 66,882,230 Americans cast their votes for you. Perhaps one of your trusted advisors has given you bum information. Maybe they told you that we voted for you — walked, marched, prayed, fund-raised and knocked on doors for you — because we hoped you would try to reunite the country. Of the total votes cast that long-ago November day, I’m guessing that about 1,575 people wanted you to try to reconcile the toxic bipartisanship that culminated in those Sarah Palin rallies.

The other 66,880,655 of us wanted universal healthcare.

So nearly everyone that voted for Obama wants Obamacare? That is a lame, lame argument. There were many reasons people voted for Obama—he was charismatic, he wasn’t George Bush, he didn’t choose Sarah Palin as his running mate, he promised an open and transparent government, he promised to close Gitmo, he wasn’t George Bush, he promised to get the soldiers out of Iraq, etc. It is the height of silliness to write that every singe (except for 1,575 people) who voted for Obama actually want whatever plan comes out of Congress.

Things change and many people who supported Obama’s health care reform efforts will not support the actual plan. It’s one thing to support “doing something” about healthcare. It’s another when people get to see what is actually involved in the real plan. 

The White House has responded to the video which shows Obama and his allies stating they want single-payer health care. If Obama were truly committed to keeping private insurance you would think the White House would do a better job than this at explaining his “real” position. Has he changed his mind or what? The White House doesn’t explain. Instead, they offer up this video:

“Hi. I’m Linda Douglass. I’m the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, and one of my jobs is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health-insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines out there right now, such as this one — take a look at this one. This one says, ‘Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will Eliminate PRIVATE Insurance.’

“Well, nothing can be farther from the truth. You know the people who always try to SCARE people whenever you try to bring them health-insurance reform are at it again. And they’re taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a VERY false impression. The truth is that the president has been talking to the American people a LOT about health-insurance reform and what is at stake for them.

“So what happens is that because he’s talking to the American people so much, there are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there — they simply cherry-pick and put it together, and make it sound like he’s saying something that he didn’t really say.”

Note that she doesn’t refute Obama and his allies previous statements. She didn’t refute the fact that Obama said that he wants “a single payer health care plan, a universal health car plan.” Here’s more from Obama:

I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.

So what is it? Has Obama changed his mind?