No, I’m sorry Mr. President, but thanks for playing

Carl, what do we have for a parting gift for President Obama?

Well Peter, President Obama needed to answer two of three questions correctly, but only got one.

Will there be a Public Option? The Public Option was included albeit shrouded in distracting verbiage about exchanges and other programs and described as merely one of many choices available to consumers of healthcare. He doubled down on requirements to be placed on insurance companies by demanding their practice of denying coverage for existing conditions be criminalized. He got that one right, though just barely.

What deal did the White House make with Big Pharma? The deal the President made with the Pharmaceutical Bigwigs was not even mentioned in his speech and therefore left many Americans asking for the details and why the White House felt it had to be kept secret. No credit for this answer.

What is Healthcare Reform all about? President Obama’s answer to the final question demonstrated his misreading of the healthcare debate and its importance to the Party that put him in power.

As he stated in his speech, "To my Progressive friends, healthcare reform has always been about ending insurance abuses and making coverage affordable to everyone".

This merely trades one sin for another. Insurance companies will temporarily avoid major abuses to get millions of additional policy holders who will be forced to purchase coverage. The answer most Americans wanted to hear is that reform has always been about making and keeping people healthy! Every other advanced country on Earth mandates that healthcare providers must first demonstrate that the care they provide is working by making their patients healthier rather than merely lining the pockets of the drug and healthcare industries. Obama’s "Progressive friends" want universal healthcare for all citizens under a single payer system which is the only way costs can ever be controlled. They want healthcare providers to be rewarded or penalized for actual results their patients experienced from their care and not for the profits they generate for healthcare profiteers. But, in lieu of single payer, they were willing to go with a ROBUST Public Option and this is not it

So as a parting gift, the President will receive Primary challenges to be the Party’s candidate for President in the 2012 election. He will also receive Little to No cooperation from the Liberals he threw under the bus. He will get more challenges from the Left to replace Congressional moderates and corporate enablers that claim to be "business friendly" when they are in fact "anti consumer"

It shouldn’t be too surprising that a graduate of the university that spawned the likes of Milton Friedman would not be able to see any point of view except that offered through the prism of corporate doctrine and disaster capitalism. What is a surprise is that Progressives have not yet learned this. That they still hold out hope that corporatists like Obama will ever do anything that doesn’t benefit profit over all.