WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- President Obama will not abandon healthcare reform despite the election of a Republican critic from Massachusetts to the U.S. Senate, a top aide said Sunday.
David Axelrod, chief political adviser to the Democratic president, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" news program that even though GOP candidate Scott Brown last week won a special election to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the death of Democratic stalwart Edward Kennedy while vowing to derail healthcare reform efforts, the American people nevertheless want to see reforms.
"The president will not walk away from the American people, will not hand them over to the tender mercies of health insurance companies who take advantage," Axelrod said. "He will not walk away from people with pre-existing conditions. He will not walk away from senior citizens in Medicare."
Axelrod attributed Brown's election partly to allowing "insurance industry propaganda, the propaganda of the opponents" to define what healthcare reforms are about.
But, he asserted, "the underlying elements of (the Democrats' reforms) are popular and important. And people will never know what's in that bill until we pass it, the president signs it and they have a whole range of new protections they never had before."
