Pelosi: I've been for Single Payer for 30 years

"I've been for Single Payer for 30 years. When I first started out being for Single Payer, Medicare was 14 years old, it was an adolescent practically. Now it has become such a formidable part of the life of our seniors, [and] Single Payer can become disruptive to Medicare..."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during a blogger conference call - October 29, 2009

Of course, if both Medicare and employer-based insurance ultimately fall by the wayside [as many predict will happen] because of the new health care legislation, there won't be a viable Medicare or employer-based insurance program to disrupt, and then, I suppose, Nancy Pelosi and her ilk would be at liberty to seek out the next best choice: a Single Payer option.

However, to be fair with Speaker Pelosi, she has never attempted to conceal her affinity for the Single Payer option. President Obama, on the other hand - in his weekly radio address on August 22 - asserted that a "government takeover of health care sounds scary to him," even though he professed to being a proponent of Single Payer health care in a speech to the AFL-CIO in 2003.

Here's what Obama said in June of 2003:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan..., that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

Here's what he said in his weekly radio address on August 22, 2009:

"We've all heard the charge that reform will somehow bring about a government takeover of health care. I know that sounds scary to many folks, it sounds scary to me too."

Of course, there may very well be a simple explanation to this apparent contradiction. Maybe Obama is just frightened of his own ideologies......