For months I’ve been reporting in The Huffington Post that President
Obama made a backroom deal last summer with the for-profit hospital
lobby that he would make sure there would be no national public option
in the final health reform legislation. (See here, here and here). I’ve been increasingly frustrated that
except for an initial story last August in the
New York Times, no major media outlet has
picked up this important story and investigated further.

Hopefully, that’s changing. On Monday, Ed Shultz interviewed
New
York Times Washington reporter David Kirkpatrick on his MSNBC TV
show, and Kirkpatrick confirmed the existence of the deal. Shultz quoted
Chip Kahn, chief lobbyist for the for-profit hospital industry on
Kahn’s confidence that the White House would honor the no public option
deal, and Kirkpatrick responded:

“That’s a lobbyist for the hospital industry and he’s
talking about the hospital industry’s specific deal with the White House
and the Senate Finance Committee and, yeah, I think the hospital
industry’s got a deal here. There really were only two deals, meaning
quid pro quo handshake deals on both sides, one with the hospitals and
the other with the drug industry. And I think what you’re interested in
is that in the background of these deals was the presumption, shared on
behalf of the lobbyists on the one side and the White House on the
other, that the public option was not going to be in the final product.”

Kirkpatrick also acknowledged that White House Deputy Chief of Staff
Jim Messina had confirmed the existence of the deal to him.

This should be big news. Even while President Obama was saying that
he thought a public option was a good idea and encouraging supporters to
believe his healthcare plan would include one, he had promised
for-profit hospital lobbyists that there would be no public option in
the final bill.