Even the best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry. Obama was trying to trumpet his plan for the good of the little people but he stepped it when it was pointed out to him that he didn’t have to live with healthcare rationing because he was rich:

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people — like the president himself — wouldn’t face.

The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News’ special on health care reform, “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson.
Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it’s not provided by insurance.
Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn’t seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he’s proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.
The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if “it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care
“There’s a whole bunch of care that’s being provided that every study, that every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier,” he said.

I guess some animals are more equal than others, huh?
And for those who think people want a public option because they want to join it, check out the poll in the article. Support for the plan drops to 37% if the public option forces insurance companies out of business. That 63% are probably those who don’t want to get stuck with the public option if the other insurance companies are forced out of business because they couldn’t compete with a tax payer subsidized insurance carrier.
But what they don’t realize is that they won’t have a choice, they’ll be forced to join it if their employer decides its cheaper to do so. One of the experts in the audience estimated that 70% of those with private insurance would wind up in the public plan. Do you really want the same people who run the post office, GM and Amtrak deciding what procedure you can have? You think it’s impossible trying to deal with your insurance company’s bureaucracy, just wait until you deal with a federal bureaucracy that’s processing the paperwork of millions of people who need an OK for their procedure. Do you think they can handle it?
When asked about rationing, Obama didn’t answer the question (as the article notes):

Another neurologist, Dr. John Corboy of the University of Colorado Health Science Center, asked the president, “What can you do to convince the American public that there actually are limits to what we can pay for with our American health care system and if there are going to be limits, who’s going to design the system and who’s going to enforce the rules for a system like that?”

The answer to the last part is simple, the public option will become the single payer system that the lefties want and then the government will enforce the rules by not providing for care they deem unnecessary (of course the federal bureaucrat without a medical degree will be making that call). Those with money like Ted Kennedy and Obama will be able to have whatever procedures they want, the rest of us will be stuck with rationed care. You better pray you don’t get sick and kiss grandma goodbye.
BTW, does anyone else see a problem with taxing benefits when you know that 70% of those with private healtcare will be dumped into the public option? How will it be payed for then?
(via)