Obama’s
questionnaire responses at odds with health
care claim
By James D. Agresti
August 5, 2009
Click for more detailed footnoted version
In a speech before the American Medical
Association on June 15, 2009, President
Obama lashed out at those claiming he is
pursuing a stealth agenda to socialize the
U.S. healthcare system.
Declaring that his health care plan is not
“a Trojan horse for a single-payer system,”
Obama vowed, “So, when you hear the
naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring
about government-run health care, know this
– they are not telling the truth.”
However, Obama’s responses to a 1996
questionnaire reveal an agenda at odds with
his claim and in near-perfect accord with
critics’ assertions regarding his healthcare
plan.
Asked if he supported “a single payer health
plan for Illinois,” Obama answered, “Yes,”
but then went even further, stating that
“such a program would probably have to be
instituted at the federal level; the
long-term objective would be a universal
care system that does not differentiate
between the unemployed, the disabled, and so
on.”
One day later, Obama filed an amended
response to the same questionnaire, calling
for Medicaid recipients and “all workers” in
Illinois to be enrolled in a “single,
graduated system.”
A Pattern of
Denials
Obama’s replies to this questionnaire
were uncovered in 2007 and 2008 by Politico,
fueling a debate over gun control based on
Obama's answer of “Yes” to the question, “Do you support state legislation
to ban the manufacture, sale and possession
of handguns?”
When the questionnaire first emerged
revealing Obama’s stances on gun control and
other controversial issues such as parental
consent for minors undergoing abortions, Obama’s
campaign denied he provided the answers and
claimed a staffer filled out the form
without Obama’s knowledge.
However, all
known verifiable evidence points to the
contrary. For example, both forms contain
answers written in the first-person voice,
with phrases such as, “I support,” “I
oppose,” and “I believe.”
Additionally, the first response includes a
cover sheet specifying a “Date of Interview”
and “Place of Interview,” and the second
response contains a note in what appears to
be Obama’s handwriting.
After Obama's first response to the
questionnaire was published, Carol Harwell,
a former Obama campaign manager claimed that
she filled out the form. But, after her
assertion was undermined by the discovery of
the second reply with Obama’s handwriting
and contradicted by an Obama supporter whose
home was listed as the “Place of Interview”
on the first response, Harwell failed to
return calls seeking comment.
The White House recently produced a video to
counter revelations of Obama’s support for
“single-payer healthcare,” an expression
that studiously avoids the word
“government,” which is the unnamed
“single-payer.”
The narrator of the video, who is a former
ABC news reporter and the communications
director for the White House Office of
Health Reform, proclaims “there are people
out there with a computer and a lot of free
time, and they take a phrase here and there
— they simply cherry-pick and put it
together, and make it sound like he’s saying
something that he didn’t really say.”
Nevertheless, an uncut video from 2003 shows
Obama speaking before a union conference,
calling for a “single-payer universal health
care program” and affirming, “everybody in,
nobody out.”
© 2009 Just Facts
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