By George E. Curry

In attempting to regain control over the health care debate Wednesday night by delivering an address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama satisfied neither his liberal base nor his conservative critics by expressing support for a limited public option but not demonstrating a willingness to fight for such a provision.

Obama expressed support for a “not-for-profit public option” within the context of a larger insurance exchange in which individuals and small business owners can shop for affordable insurance.

“Let me be clear – it would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance,” Obama emphasized. “No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up.”

Although he promised to call out Republicans who continue to misrepresent his plan, President Obama signaled a willingness to forgo even the vastly scaled down public option.

“To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable for those without it,” he said. “The public option is only a means to that end – and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal.”

That won’t satisfy groups – many of them a key part of his political base – that believe the federal option is needed to force insurance companies to offer less costly insurance alternatives.

In a letter sent to President Obama last week, the Congressional Black Caucus’ Health and Wellness Taskforce, co-chaired by Representatives Donna M. Christensen and Danny K. Davis, urged Obama to support “a strong public health option that will allow the nation’s more than 46 million uninsured Americans – more than half of whom are people of color – to finally have access to affordable, meaningful health care coverage no later than 2013.”

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said in a letter to Obama, “Without the competitive check provided by a robust public plan, however, many Americans will find themselves with no meaningful health insurance choices even after reform.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted that a health care bill could not pass the House without a public option component. However, key Democratic senators have told the president that the majority of senators are opposed to such a plan.

At minimum, progressive Democrats had hoped that Obama would fight for a broader public option that would be triggered by the insurance companies’ failure to meet certain targets within, say, five years.

Critics of what has been derisively called “Obamacare,” have planted seeds of doubt by misrepresenting the bills making their way through Congress and, in some cases, outright lies.

A television commercial for a group calling itself Patients United, for example, asserted, “Washington wants to bring Canadian-style health care to the U.S.”

However, as FactCheck.org pointed out, “The health care bills moving through Congress don’t call for a single-payer system like Canada’s, and legislation that does support a purely government-run system is quietly dying in committee. Obama, too, has stated repeatedly that he doesn’t back a conversion to a single-payer system.”

Another scare tactic conjures up images of “death panels” for the elderly.

In an appearance on former Sen. Fred Thompson’s radio program, Betsy McCaughey, a former Republican lieutenant governor of New York, said: “The Congress would make it mandatory…that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner, how to decline nutrition, how to decline being hydrated, how to go into a hospice care …all to do what’s in society’s best interest… and cut your life short.”

FactCheck.org dismissed such claims as “nonsense.” It explained,”What the bill actually provides for is voluntary Medicare-funded end-of-life counseling…There is no requirement to attend regular sessions, and there is absolutely no provision encouraging euthanasia.”

The Democrats inexplicably let the debate be distorted by such outlandish falsehoods. The progressive wing of the party belatedly insisted on the public option and only recently worked to counter the misleading television ads or circus-like town hall meetings designed to show that most Americans oppose health reform. Of course, most major polls show that Americans favor an overhaul of health care insurance.

The United States is the only industrialized country in the world without universal health care, as Obama noted Wednesday night. Although we spend twice as much as other industrialized nations each year on health care ($7,129 per person), our health ranks 37th in the world, according to the World Health Organization.

President Obama noted that the first bill for comprehensive health reform was introduced by Rep. John Dingell, Sr. in 1943. Yet, president after president has failed to tame the $2.5 trillion a year health system. If Obama hopes to succeed in bringing about a different outcome, he should mobilize a truth squad to refute baseless charges about his program as they are raised and make a house calls to wavering members of his own party.

George E. Curry, former Editor of EMERGE Magazine, is a syndicated columnist for the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the Philadelphia Inquirer.