Samuelson is correct that Obama is being hypocritical.
However, by the same token, the Republican opposition is even more
hypocritical.
The Republicans are not beating up on Obama for reinforcing the status quo. On the contrary, their tactic is to portray the Obama plan as something that is radical and threatening. Maybe that message helps them politically. But it undermines any possibility of a real debate about which direction to take in health care policy.
I would like to see a debate between reforms that free up health care market and policies that entrench the status quo. The fact that the Republicans are not engaging in that debate is just one more reason for believers in markets to view Republicans as unreliable allies.
I linked to this via John Stossel's blog. This is a good post. But we might go farther and ask ourselves why both parties are willing to exacerbate a problem both agree exists. The agency problem, perhaps?
A "public option", is rather radical, as are some other proposals that have been floated. As some of these ideas get dropped the proposal becomes less and less radical, but at least for the earlier criticisms when "a public option" was still a major piece of the plan there was nothing hypocritical, dishonest, or even inaccurate about criticizing the plan as radical.