during his press briefing today that
nothing has changed, we're still expecting a public option, and he chastised the media (that's you, Rachel) for their hair-on-fire declarations of bullshit.
This is nothing new for Rachel. She's always on the ledge about something. I'm still waiting for Hillary to bring down the Democratic Convention.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/gibbs-nothing-has-changed-we-are-stilPress conference on Air Force One this afternoon in which Robert Gibbs says he's baffled by all the uproar:
Q Public option -- is it dead or not?
MR. GIBBS: I got to tell you, this is one of the more curious things I've ever seen in my life. I was on a Sunday show, I said the same thing about a public option that I've said for I don't know how many weeks. The Secretary reiterated what the President said the day before, and you'd think there was some new policy.
Q The language appeared to be --
MR. GIBBS: The language "appeared" to be?Q Well, the language on Saturday -- the President made -- saying that the public option was only a sliver, and whether it's in it or it isn't in it seems to move the ball a little bit from where you guys were. No?
MR. GIBBS: No. I think you can go back and find the President saying -- look, the President has said that's his preference, but the President has also said I don't know how many times if the goals are choice and competition, right, the reason you have a public option is because you have an insurance market that doesn't have choice or competition. If somebody is trying to seek private insurance on -- private health insurance on a private market and only has -- because this happens in some areas or in some states where there's one insurance company that does business in that region, that that is -- that doesn't ensure the type of affordability and quality that you'd want to see in a health insurance system.
So you have some competition that provides some choice, so that if a family of four might have different insurance needs than a single person or a couple that's married with no children or what have you. The goals are choice and competition. His preference is a public option. If there are other ideas, he's happy to look at them. Because I think his -- I think this is true not only for the issue of health care, but for virtually every other issue that he'll ever deal with in public life is he has goals about what he wants to accomplish and he's not necessarily wedded to one -- only one way of getting there. I think he's said that a hundred times.
Q Just to be completely clear, has anything changed on the public option?
MR. GIBBS: No. I challenge you guys all to go back and see what we've said about this over the course of many, many, many, many months, and you'll find a boring consistency to our rhetoric.