Research

In the Obama campaign’s second e-mail of the day to supporters, campaign officials once again are caught scrambling to try to defend Obama’s record of failed promises.

Here’s another failed promise that Obama staffer Stephanie Cutter gets completely wrong:

SHOT – Obama For America Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter: “The bottom line here is simple: This is a President who does what he says he's going to do. Other presidents and lawmakers tried for 70 years to pass health reform -- but this president took on the insurance industry and got it done.”(Obama For America, Campaign E-Mail, “Today's Republican Talking Points,” 1/3/12)

CHASER – Obama Cut Deals With Insurance Industry To Pass Obamacare.

Click To Watch How Obama Cut Deals With Insurance Industry

NARRATOR: “Rahm Emanuel engineered this strategy. Everyone remembered how special interests had sabotaged the Clinton plan.”

PETER BAKER: “They want to get people at the table. They don't want this to be, at first at least, a fight against the insurers, a fight against the medical industry. They want- the pharmaceutical industry. They want to get buy-in.”

Pres. BARACK OBAMA: “I want to switch gears and get some groups in here.”

NARRATOR: “Obama's advisers had told him that many of the lobbyists in the room were prepared to cut a deal. Karen Ignagni is the chief lobbyist for the insurance industry.”

Pres. BARACK OBAMA: “Why don't you wait for a mike, Karen, so that-“

KAREN IGNAGNI, Pres., America's Health Insurance Plans: “We entered this year being committed to change, being committed to restructuring and committed to actually helping to get this done.

We hear the American people about what's not working. We've taken that very seriously. You have our commitment to play, to contribute, and to help pass health care reform this year.”

Pres. BARACK OBAMA: “Good. Thank you, Karen. That's good news. That's America's Health Insurance Plans.” [applause]

SHERYL GAY STOLBERG: “This was really astonishing. Here she was, on record, saying, "We're going to help you." And so, too, were the drug companies.”

WENDELL POTTER, V.P., CIGNA Insurance, 2003-08: “Karen Ignagni wanted to be sure that she was at the White House, representing the industry in the most positive way that she possibly could. It was part of the industry's charm offensive, as I call it. The industry knew that it was going to be under attack this year, or at least the legislation would focus very heavily on the insurance industry.”

JONATHAN COHN: “And you know, look, I mean, they could read the political tea leaves, You know, the saying in Washington was, "You can be at the table or you can be on the menu."

NARRATOR: “Privately, Ignagni was playing hardball. She said she'd support the bill only if everyone was required to buy health insurance.”

TOM DASCHLE: “They said for the first time they would support universal coverage with one caveat, and that is that we have an individual mandate requiring people to buy insurance, so it's not just the sick that buy insurance but everybody. That was the quid pro quo.”

NARRATOR: “Obama had campaigned against the mandate. Ignagni was insisting he reverse himself.”

WENDELL POTTER: “They want to make sure that they get a requirement that all of us buy health insurance. They want to make sure that we are all forced by to buy products from them. And they want to make sure that there's no alternative other than the private insurance market. That's why they're so adamantly opposed to the public option.

NARRATOR: Obama had also supported the public option, a government health plan, and Ignagni wanted him to walk away from that, too.”

(PBS’ “Frontline: Obama’s Deal,” 4/13/10)