Eagle Forum Urges Grassroots Not to Fall
for Co-Op Compromise
Washington, D.C. — Eagle Forum, a conservative public policy organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, urges grassroots Americans not to fall for the Obama Administration’s recent hints that they may drop the public option from the health care bill and replace it with a “co-op compromise” that is more popular with some House Blue Dog Democrats and moderate Senate Democrats.
“Make no mistake, any Democrat health care bill will include both mandates and subsidies for ‘eligible’ or ‘qualified’ health insurance,” said Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly. “The words eligible and qualified mean that Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Tom Daschle, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and the like, will have the power to decide who gets what medical care.”
On Sunday, August 16th, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs again attempted to sell the Democrats’ socialist health care plan with capitalist rhetoric when pressed about rumors of dropping the public option. Gibbs stated, “What we have to have is choice and competition in the insurance market.” However, that very same day, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ comments essentially reiterated that the government will have a role no matter what: “I think there will be a competitor to private insurers. That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing.”
“The important thing that the American people must understand is that when Democrats say there must be a competitor for private sector insurance, the competitor they speak of is the government,” said Schlafly. “Any attempt to rename or rebrand the public option as a ‘co-op’ or something other than government-run is purely cosmetic and a sneaky tactic to lessen grassroots opposition.”
“The White House and liberal congressional leaders are desperate to appear as if they are listening and being responsive to the grassroots, especially in claiming to drop the end-of-life provisions from the bill, but name changes are an old trick in the liberal playbook,” continued Schlafly. “‘Co-op’ is nothing more than a euphemism for ‘government-run health care,’ just like ‘undocumented worker’ was nothing more than Ted Kennedy’s concocted, less obvious term for ‘illegal alien.’ ”
“So-called compromises on contentious pieces of legislation carried out behind closed doors frustrate the grassroots,” said Schlafly. “The Democrats will claim to have dropped the public option in order to get enough votes in the Senate to pass it, and then air-drop the public plan language back into the bill in the dead of night before it’s signed. Just think back to the 3 a.m., 300-page amendment Nancy Pelosi added to the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill the morning of the floor vote.”
“No matter what superficial changes are made, this is a bad bill and it cannot be improved without being defeated in its entirety,” concluded Schlafly. “I urge every U.S. citizen nationwide to tell their Senators not to compromise on Americans’ health care.”