NWI Patriots Blog

From Politico, Health concession fuels blowback

House Democratic officials say a public option will remain in their version of a health reform bill, even now that the White House has acknowledged it may be dropped later.

“This is just for the Senate,” a House leadership official said about the administration’s concession on a public option. “There is no way it passes the House the first time around without a public option.

“The liberals (around 100+) won’t allow it. It if comes back from conference committee without public option and there is the right pitch that it is this or nothing, then it may pass the House.”

Leaders now say the House will put off a vote on health reform until the end of September — to provide a cooling-off period from the raucous town meetings and to give strategists a better sense of where the Senate is headed.

The White House said the media frenzy was prompted partly by bored reporters who haven’t been paying attention to what the administration has been saying for weeks.

More at the link.

There aren’t enough votes in the Senate to pass the “public option” according to Democrat Senator Kent Conrad in an appearance on Fox News Sunday:

Momentum behind a new government-run health care plan appeared to slow considerably Sunday, as a lead Democratic negotiator called the option a “wasted effort” and President Obama’s health secretary suggested the White House is ready to accept a health care reform package without it.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., one of six negotiators trying to hammer out a bipartisan compromise measure on the Senate Finance Committee, told “FOX News Sunday” that the so-called public option simply does not have the votes to pass.

“The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option. There never have been,” he said. “So to continue to chase that rabbit I think is just a wasted effort.”

Conrad and other negotiators on the finance committee are instead pushing a system of nonprofit insurance cooperatives, as an alternative to the public plan.

“Co-ops are very prevalent in our society,” Conrad said. “They’ve been a very successful business model.”

More at the link.