As Rachel reported: Health Care Company Stocks Up Today After WH Backs Off Public Option

[flpoljunkie]

Monday, August 17, 2009, 2:54pm CDT | Modified: Monday, August 17, 2009, 6:00pm
UNH stock up after White House backs off on public option

Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal - by Chris Newmarker Staff Writer

Shares of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group Inc. and other major health insurers rose Monday after the Obama administration signaled over the weekend that it might accept a health care reform package that doesn’t include a new public health-insurance program.

As the overall stock market fell Monday, UnitedHealth (NYSE: UNH) stock was up 42 cents per share, or 1.5 percent, to $28.48 at the close of trading. Indianapolis-based Wellpoint Inc. (NYSE: WLP) rose $1.51, or 2.9 percent, to $53.70; and Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna Inc. (NYSE: AET) climbed 86 cents, or 2.98 percent, to $29.68.

The good day for health-insurance stocks came on a bad day for the market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 186 points, or 2 percent, amid renewed worries about the economy.

The health insurers, though, had less to fret about. President Obama had been calling for a new public health insurance plan to serve as a counterweight to private insurers. But over the weekend, the administration signaled it would consider a compromise proposal in the U.S. Senate to create nonprofit cooperatives — an option that experts see as less threatening for insurers.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a CNN interview on Sunday that a public-plan option was “not the essential element” of health care reform.

http://twincities.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2009/08/17/daily10.html?ana=yfcpc

[Cha]

1. Only glitch is the White House

didn't back off but that doesn't seem to stop anybody from going ahead as if they did.

CorporatemediaWHORES.

[Egnever]

2. This really is beyond belief

One AP headline all of a sudden = official white house statement, and reporter after reporter repeats the bullshit.

The most amazing thing though is after so many here watched as they lied to us throughout the Shrub administration so many are willing to take their word as Gospel yet again. It just boggles the mind.

[Cha]

6. Thanks for being one of the

sane voices around here because this kind of shite comes under the heading of..if you repeat a lie often, long, and loud enough..it becomes fact like, "Al Gore said he invented the internet".

The ones here who repeat the coporatewhore crap don't care that it's a lie.

[Baltoman991]

3. WTF!!!!

The White House backed off nothing. Why is it that the media ignores the statement given by Gibbs after Sebelius ran her mouth?

This is why I stopped watching Rachel Maddow. She never liked Obama and it was easy to see that so now she's gladly doing her part to bring him the fuck down.

[Thrill]

4. The administration did no such thing.

. There is no journalism anymore

[and-justice-for-all]

5. Thats funny, all over a disconnect? OK.

No Public Option in the bill and it hits the killing floor.

Obama has not backed off from the public option, his position has not changed, just the media spin.lies has.

[Phx_Dem]

7. Queen of Doom rides again! Give it a rest Rachel. Robert Gibbs said

during his press briefing today that nothing has changed, we're still expecting a public option, and he chastised the media (that's you, Rachel) for their hair-on-fire declarations of bullshit.

This is nothing new for Rachel. She's always on the ledge about something. I'm still waiting for Hillary to bring down the Democratic Convention.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/gibbs-nothing-has-changed-we-are-stil

Press conference on Air Force One this afternoon in which Robert Gibbs says he's baffled by all the uproar:

Q Public option -- is it dead or not?

MR. GIBBS: I got to tell you, this is one of the more curious things I've ever seen in my life. I was on a Sunday show, I said the same thing about a public option that I've said for I don't know how many weeks. The Secretary reiterated what the President said the day before, and you'd think there was some new policy.

Q The language appeared to be --

MR. GIBBS: The language "appeared" to be?

Q Well, the language on Saturday -- the President made -- saying that the public option was only a sliver, and whether it's in it or it isn't in it seems to move the ball a little bit from where you guys were. No?

MR. GIBBS: No. I think you can go back and find the President saying -- look, the President has said that's his preference, but the President has also said I don't know how many times if the goals are choice and competition, right, the reason you have a public option is because you have an insurance market that doesn't have choice or competition. If somebody is trying to seek private insurance on -- private health insurance on a private market and only has -- because this happens in some areas or in some states where there's one insurance company that does business in that region, that that is -- that doesn't ensure the type of affordability and quality that you'd want to see in a health insurance system.

So you have some competition that provides some choice, so that if a family of four might have different insurance needs than a single person or a couple that's married with no children or what have you. The goals are choice and competition. His preference is a public option. If there are other ideas, he's happy to look at them. Because I think his -- I think this is true not only for the issue of health care, but for virtually every other issue that he'll ever deal with in public life is he has goals about what he wants to accomplish and he's not necessarily wedded to one -- only one way of getting there. I think he's said that a hundred times.

Q Just to be completely clear, has anything changed on the public option?

MR. GIBBS: No. I challenge you guys all to go back and see what we've said about this over the course of many, many, many, many months, and you'll find a boring consistency to our rhetoric.

[Sebastian Doyle]

8. Not to interrupt the Cheerleader bashfest against Rachel, but

....what's important here is not what you think about her response to what came from the mouth of two members of the Administration.

The key thing here is that the FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT INSURANCE CORPORATION shareholders believed it. And they thought they would get to make more money by fucking more people.

THAT is who you should be bashing. Not Rachel Maddow. Not Thom Hartmann. Not Howard Dean.