The public option was specifically killed off by insurance industry lobbying by Karen Ignagni, as were reductions in Medicare drug prices by the equivalent guy

The public option was specifically killed off by insurance industry lobbying by Karen Ignagni, as were reductions in Medicare drug prices by the equivalent guy for the pharmaceutical industry. As I understand it, Obama wanted a public option, but had enough difficulty getting Obamacare passed at all, and those sacrifices (along with requiring the individual mandate) were the price of preventing hundreds of millions of dollars of anti-Obamacare attack ads from those two industry lobbies. I'm not sure how much more to the story there is than that, but for reference, see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/obamasdeal/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/obamasdeal/