David Axelrod tells POLITICO that the administration is not dialing back its support for a public health-insurance option. Axelrod: Firm on public option

White House senior adviser David Axelrod tells POLITICO that the administration is not dialing back its support for a public health-insurance option as part of a reform bill, and that a comment he made on NBC’s “Meet the Press” was misinterpreted.

Axelrod told NBC’s David Gregory that President Barack Obama “certainly agrees that we have to have competition and choice, to hold the insurance companies honest. … He believes the public option is a good tool. Now, it shouldn’t define the whole health care debate, however.”


The Associated Press, which often sets the agenda for how other news organizations cover Sunday shows, popped up a headline saying: “White House shifts on public health care option". The story's lead: "WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's top political adviser is backing away from having a government health care plan compete against private carriers.”

Axelrod disputed that interpretation in an e-mail.

“In no way did I back off our position,” he wrote. “I must have said half a dozen times that he thinks the public option is an important tool to bring about competition and choice that will help consumers. To say that it is not the whole of health insurance reform, in a country where 160 million people have employer-sponsored health insurance and would not even be affected by this, does not mean I am backing off!”

Indeed, Axelrod also told Gregory: “He said there must be an exchange where people can get insurance at a competitive price. He believes in competition and choice. The public option is an important tool to help provoke that where there is no competition. He still believes that. ... So we want to create a pool in which people who don't have insurance, and small businesses, can go and get insurance at a competitive price. And a public option would be a valuable tool within that group, that package of plans that would be offered, private and public.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs made similar remarks on ABC’s “This Week.”

Host George Stephanopoulos, summing up a long exchange, said to Gibbs: “The president, from what I can hear, is going to make the case for the public health-insurance option — for a form of the public health-insurance option — on Wednesday, but he is not going to say: ‘If you don’t bring me one, I veto the bill.’”

Gibbs replied: “I doubt we’re going to get into heavy veto threats on Wednesday. We’re going to talk about what we can do, because we’re so close to getting it done. He will talk about the public option, and why he believes, and continues to believe, that it is a valuable component of providing choice and competition, that helps individuals and small business, at the same time provides a check on insurance companies.”

Giving the opposition view, Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Republican Conference, said on "This Week": "Republicans are ready to work for comprehensive health care reform. When I went home and did town hall meetings across the state of Indiana, I heard people saying, ‘Look, we need health care reform. We need to do something to lower the cost of health insurance for families and small businesses and lower the cost of health care.’

"But I also heard people say that they don't want a government-run plan that is going to lead to a government takeover of health care in this country, paid for with $800 billion in higher taxes. ... I really think the American people — at least at the town hall meetings that I had, George — many Americans feel that this federal government is spiraling out of control."