This is what Barack Obama said in 2003:

Obama: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer [universal] health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world…cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. … A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. … [A]s all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, we have to take back the House.” (Laura Meckler, “Let’s Go To The Video,” The Wall Street Journal’s “Washington Wire” Blog, www.blogs.wsj.com, 1/22/08)

But, today as in the video above says something different:

Q: Why not a single-payer? Why not get the corporate battling and the lobbyists out of the way, and just go to a single-payer?

A: Well, I’ve said this before. If I were designing a system from scratch, then I’d probably set up a single-payer system. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the terminology: Single-payer basically means that you’ve got one government funded program. It doesn’t have to be government run. But it’s government funded. Medicare would be an example of a single-payer system, if everybody was in Medicare.

But the problem is we’re not starting from scratch. We’ve got a system in which most people have become accustomed to getting their health insurance through their employer. And for us to immediately transition from that, and given that a lot of people work for insurance companies, a lot people work for HMOs. You’ve got a whole system of institutions that have been set up. Making that transition in a rapid way I think would be very difficult. And people don’t have time to wait. They need relief now. So my attitude is let’s build up the system we got, let’s make it more efficient, we may be over time – as we make the system more efficient and everybody’s cover – decide that there are other ways for us to provide care more effectively.

Flap is now confused. Is Barack Obama for single-payer government funded/managed health care for everyone or not?

John McCain does not favor a government funded and/or managed system.

What about Barack Obama? What does “over time” mean?

Again, Obama demonstrates that his words do not matter – nor are they consistent.

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