Obama Not To Be Believed On Health Care

It seems nothing coming out of the White House can be trusted when it pertains to health care:

"I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies - they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process." - President Barack Obama in August 2008

More accurately, as Charlie Crist put it last week:

"It seems that a bill that was crafted in a closed door, backroom meeting in the White House will end the same way. President [Barack] Obama has broken his pledge to the American people to be transparent throughout this process, and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid and [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi have only aided in the secrecy with sweetheart deals and dead of the night votes." - Charlie Crist, former Florida governor who is running for U.S. Senate, in a statement released Jan. 5.

According to PolitiFact.com:

"While the Senate and House floor debates have been televised on C-SPAN, negotiations have almost always been away from television cameras. ...

"... Despite the action on the House and Senate floors, most of the serious negotiations on the health care bill have been done in the same fashion as other major initiatives in the past - behind closed doors. From negotiations with the drug companies and health care interests to final assembly of the delicate compromise on abortion, the bulk of the big deliberations and discussions have occurred out of the public eye."

This is par for the course for Obama.

He recently made the claim that he did not campaign for a public option for health care, when it was clearly in his campaign literature that he wanted a public option.

Also, during the campaign, he said he was opposed to forcing people to buy health insurance. However, in 2009, when the health care debate began, he changed his mind and wanted to force people to buy insurance.

Nothing he says when it comes to health care can be trusted.