Obama aide offers reassurance to left on public option

Another day, another White House aide insisting that liberal anxiety about President Barack Obama's support for the public option is baseless.

As the House and Senate get nearer to opening floor debate on healthcare reform bills, Obama has been unable to quell doubts about his liberal supporters that he will fight to uphold the liberal principle that a government-run public option that would compete with health insurance companies is an essential component of fixing the healthcare system.

At a a forum sponsored by the liberal magazine The New Republic Tuesday, White House Office of Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle offered an answer to those liberal critics: "I think they’re wrong."

"The president’s talked about the public plan option every single time he’s talked about health reform and he’s said all along that he thought it was a critical tool to help get choice and competition and hold insurance companies accountable," DeParle said."He put it on the table and he’s provided the leadership to get us to this point."

But liberals want more from Obama, especially to round up the votes needed to pass the public option in the Senate. Though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has decided to move forward with a compromise form of the public option in the upper chamber's healthcare reform bill, liberals on and off Capitol Hill have complained at the president has done too little to promote the policy. Especially worrying to the left is the White House's continued courting of centrist Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine).

DeParle is that latest in a string of White House staffers who have pushed back at the notion that Obama is ready to toss the public option aside to win over Snowe, or for any other reason. On Monday, Christina Romer, who is chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, called the public option a "potentially important source of cost containment is the inclusion of a public health insurance option" and a key to reform. On Sunday, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer penned a blog post declaiming "rumors" that the president is abandoning the public option.

The skepticism from the political left is not baseless, however. Not only has Obama and his aides aggressively sought the support of Snowe -- and the bipartisan sheen that support would create -- but the president and his aides have sought to leave him the wiggle room to sign a bill without a public option.