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twitterThe ball’s in Reid’s court: Passing the public option
AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., center left, gets a hug by Sen. Jay Rockefeller D-W.Va, as Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., left and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., right, looks on after the U.S. Senate voted to begin debate on legislation for a broad health care overhaul at Capitol Hill in Washington on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2009.
Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Harry Reid
Sun Archives
- Former Gov. List: Health care bill ‘so liberal,’ will cost Reid (11-23-2009)
- The skinny on the health care reform bills in each chamber of Congress (11-22-2009)
- Senate bill would cover Medicaid expansion for all states (11-19-2009)
- Long-sought, Harry Reid’s goal of health care reform a step closer (11-19-2009)
- 2,074-page health bill includes surgery, payroll tax hike (11-18-2009)
- Harry Reid to present $849 billion health care bill (11-18-2009)
Sun Coverage
Washington — Moments after the Senate voted to open debate on its health care bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stepped off the chamber floor to take a phone call from the widow of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.
Vicki Kennedy was in tears as she congratulated Reid on the vote, and they both agreed that her husband, who had fought throughout his professional life for health care reform, was smiling down on the accomplishment.
Reid would not celebrate for long.
The next hurdle was obvious: The Democratic intraparty feud over the public option — the government-run insurance plan that has tripped Democrats throughout the health care debate.
In fact, Reid that night announced that several senators were working on a new version of the public plan option “acceptable to all Democrats,” different from the one included in the bill that had just been advanced by that landmark vote.
As the Senate prepares to begin its debate on health care legislation this week, the battle over the public option in many ways has become a proxy war for health care reform itself.
This despite President Barack Obama’s argument that the public option is just one element of the proposed reforms. The bill includes many other provisions, and only a fraction of the 30 million uninsured Americans could sign up for the public plan, according to an independent analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. (Those who have insurance offered through their employer would not be eligible.)
A generation ago the United States decided it would provide health care for its senior citizens, and agreed more recently that those who are gravely ill will not be left to die in the streets. Republicans and Democrats came together to establish Medicare for seniors in 1965 and to pass a law signed by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1986 to ensure emergency room care regardless of a person’s insurance or ability to pay.
But unlike other Western governments, the United States has not been as generous when life and death are not immediately on the line.
One reason the public option has become the focus of controversy is that it symbolizes another step toward securing health care as a right for all Americans — not just those whose jobs come with insurance or who are old enough or poor enough to qualify for government-funded care.
Democrats see in the public option an important antidote to the privately run health care system that has defined care in the United States. They believe a government-administered plan, like Medicare, would provide a lower-cost alternative and induce competition among private insurers.
Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said that in this country, “certain things you ought to have a right to — not everything, just certain things ... You ought to have a right to decent health care. That’s what we’re attempting to do with this bill. That’s what we’re attempting to do for the first time in the history of our country.”
Republicans have criticized the public option as nothing short of socialism, a driving force in what they see as a big-government takeover of private insurance in the health care bill.
Former Nevada Gov. Robert List, a Republican, said last week that the nearly 500,000 uninsured Nevadans have access to health care because they can always be seen in emergency rooms.
“The public hospital treats anybody who walks in the door, in the emergency room, or claims an emergency or they need health care,” List said. “So it’s a misnomer to say these people are without health care. They may be without insurance, many of them are.”
Even among the 60 Democratic senators Reid must corral to advance the bill over the next procedural hurdles, there is skepticism over a government-run plan. A few key senators worry that the debt-strapped government would be liable for a costly new entitlement program if the public plan cannot stand on its own financially, as planned, funded only by premiums.
A majority of Americans support the public option, including a slim majority of Nevadans, according to polls.
As the Senate begins the health care debate in earnest this week, these divisions will test core Democratic beliefs and Reid’s ability to devise a compromise that can keep his 60-member caucus operating as one.
“Make no mistake, Sen. Reid, and Sen. Reid alone, controls the fate of the public option and whether or not millions of Americans get coverage without the stranglehold of big insurance corporations,” Jane Hamsher, president of the progressive Firedoglake blog, wrote in a statement. The blog’s political arm is urging Reid, if necessary, to use a procedure known as reconciliation, which would require 51 votes, rather than 60, to ensure the public option stays in the bill.
To bring the bill this far, Reid engineered a delicate balance, crafting legislation that includes a public option with an opt-out clause — allowing states to pass a law if they choose not to offer the government-run plan to their residents.
The opt-out provision was reluctantly accepted by public option supporters as a necessary compromise to advance the Senate bill.
But veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder criticized it as a bad precedent that had Reid bowing unnecessarily to states’ rights. What would have happened, Broder suggested, if landmark legislation of days past, the civil rights bills, for example, had an opt-out provision? Would segregationist states that did not agree simply opt out?
“The principle behind almost all liberal legislation is that there are certain values fundamental enough that they should be enforceable at the national level, even if a significant minority of voters or a certain number of states disagree,” Broder wrote. “No one should be denied coverage options by virtue of where they live.”
On the right flank of the Democratic caucus, the opposition could be heard on the Senate floor last weekend, just hours before the vote to advance the bill.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said that although she was agreeing to open the debate, she opposed the public option in its current form. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana also raised objections.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut had previously said he would oppose the final bill if it included the public option. Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, another pivotal conservative, also signaled early opposition.
Republicans have been almost uniformly opposed to the health care bill.
Broder suggested Democrats should instead choose the trigger proposed by Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of the few Republicans Reid continues to court to join Democrats on the bill.
The trigger as envisioned by Snowe would launch the public option in states where there is not an affordable private insurance alternative. Snowe suggests that her trigger is a way to guarantee affordable coverage even in states where governors and state legislators may keep out a public option.
Yet progressive groups dismiss the trigger, questioning, as Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley has, why insurance companies should now be allowed more opportunities to lower costs.
“A trigger would be like saying we should give Jim Crow one more chance,” said Richard Kirsch, campaign manager for Health Care for America Now, an umbrella organization for labor and advocacy groups supporting the public option. “Anyone advocating a trigger is just trying to kill the public option.”
As Reid left the cloakroom that night after speaking with Vicki Kennedy, the next chess move in the Senate was under way.
Reid announced that several senators, including Landrieu, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, were working on a new version of the public option, different from the one he had included in the bill that advanced with the bare minimum 60 votes.
“They’re working together to find a public option acceptable to all Democrats,” he said.
Reid has had a complicated history of his own with the public option — becoming a supporter of it, personally, but willing to negotiate with his broader caucus.
In many ways, Reid has sounded like Obama, said Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, one of the Senate’s strongest supporters of the public option. “That’s been Harry from the beginning — he’s always said that and he’s always meant it ... Just like the president — the president is sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker” in his support of the issue, Rockefeller said, following the vote to open the debate.
Rockefeller added that talk of compromise has not deterred him from his goal of a public option.
Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio said progressives have made many concessions. “I will not be happy with a bill that waters this down,” Brown said after the vote.
Noting that progressive senators make up the majority of the Democratic caucus, he cautioned against making too many concessions to win the votes of the few holdouts.
Reid’s job now will be to oversee the drafting of a new version of the public option that can draw those reluctant senators aboard without losing those he already has.
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I think the Sun is the only one that wants the public option!!!! AMERICA DOES NOT WANT IT!!!!!
it really is very simple...
you either support the public option...
or...
you support the greedy pig insurance companies and their very real death panels and the money grubbing whore doctors...
period...
end of story...
AMERICA DEMANDS THAT THE COST OF HEALTH CARE BE SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCED AND THE PUBLIC OPTION IS BY FAR THE BEST WAY TO DO THAT!!!
From the cost to heat and cool your house, have a telephone, a car, car insurance, internet/cable, water/sewer, and some other basics, there is nothing left. Now they want to pour salt into my wounds and MAKE me pay for health care for illegals and people who dont want it. You could call this health care initiative the straw that broke the camels back, the last nail in the coffin, the last hurrah. The USA is in no shape to take on something as big as this, let alone, vote on something like this without even reading it. We are doomed with the elected representation we have. Vote out all incumbents and keep doing so until we get representation for the people and by the people. Enough is enough. Over the next year or so, lets watch how Harry spends the 10s of millions of campaign dollars he has raised and how he spends his own money, well its not his money, but he is responsible for it..........
"The Democratic intraparty feud over the public option -- the government-run insurance plan that has tripped Democrats throughout the health care debate....They believe a government-administered plan, like Medicare, would provide a lower-cost alternative and induce competition among private insurers...only a fraction of the 30 million uninsured Americans could sign up for the public plan"
"Reid, if necessary, will use a procedure known as reconciliation, which would require 51 votes, rather than 60, to ensure the public option stays in the bill"
Over 51% of the people oppose the Reid and Pelosi bills. Just 31% favor those bills
Both the House and Senate bills sets up a new entitlement program that grows at 8% annually as far as the eye can see--faster than the economy will grow, faster than tax revenues will grow, and just as fast as the already-broken funding of Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Clueless Greid's destructive bill will cost $849 billion plus the $247 billion "doc fix" plus the $490 billion taken from seniors Medicare or $1.587 trillion and don't forget the billions for Unions and Senators Payola.
It still will NOT cover 6% (18 million) of the people.
The public option will only cover 1.5% (4.5 million) people.
So what is the point of a public option if nobody is covered and it cannot impact premiums of other private plans?
Harry Greid and Obama are in bed with the lobbyists
Earlier this year, the White House announced agreements under which hospitals and the drug industry promised cost savings in return for the overhaul's expected expansion in the number of insured patients. President Obama's top aides met frequently with lobbyists and health care industry heavyweights as his administration pieced together a national health care overhaul, according to White House visitor records obtained under a FOIA request by The Associated Press.
SEIU President Andy Stern
Barry Rand the AARP group chief executive
George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Health Plans;
Scott Serota, president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association;
Kenneth Kies, a Washington lobbyist who represents Blue Cross/Blue Shield,
Billy Tauzin, head of PhRMA, the drug industry lobby;
Richard Umbdenstock, chief of the American Hospital Association,
Laird Burnett, a top lobbyist for insurer Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc
Joel Johnson, a lobbyist with United Healthcare Services Inc. and Kinetic Concepts Inc., a medical products maker
Dr. J. James Rohack, the AMA's president
Richard Trachtman, who lobbies for the American College of Physician Services Inc., which represents internists.
I hope Harry Reid doesn't cave on the public option. It's one of the few redeeming qualities left in this health care bill. If the public option is stripped or "triggered", I can't support this bill. I know Reid knows that Nevadans don't want to see another corporate bailout, so I'm hopeful he won't let this bill be completely gutted just so the insurance companies get another bailout.
One more time-------this bill in any form will break the back of this country. Only idiots, morons and freeloaders are for it.
I want THE SAME health care insurance
that MY TAXES pay for THE CHEATING SCUM John Ensign to have.
If I pay for his - HE CAN PAY for mine!
Add to this greedy list is the every do dopey Dean Heller and the rest of the selfish Republican's who continue say NO NO NO NO!
Cry babies.
While health insurance companies spend over a million dollars a day to lobby against reform we are seeing how bought off the Republican party really is.
Scum!
Caroll: please read the astute comment by Cignettis. Learn it, live it, love it.
Harry Reid, Shelly Berkley and Dina Titus all need to be fired next November. Irresponsible politicians. We need leadership in the days our economy is in the garbage. These politicians are most interested in experimenting with Socialism, spending money like mad-men than to fix our ailing economy. Our Democrats in the House and the Senate need to be fired!
"One more time-------this bill in any form will break the back of this country."
Prove it.
Why have health care for our citizens when we can better spend billions of dollars on needless wars that are accomplishing nothing for our country. People have lost their jobs and their insurance. But it appears there are many who have insurance that don't care about the have nots here. To me that is un American. A public option would solve some of that problem. I care about the people of this country and would like to see us give support to those in need. Of course that is my opinion and I could be wrong.
I support rich greedy insurance companies, not the scumbag hapless Harry bribe taking, special interest loving never met an earmark for my friends I didn't like, and the Birds that peck at his birdseed. Please let the election be tomorrow so I can vote against anyone named Reid. All liberals should be moved to other countries. Pro life my a$$ piece of garbage.
It's very sad to see so many people that think they are entiltled to free health care. Why not free lodging? Better yet, free food for all. Other than the military, (although Obama is screwing this up as well) When has the govermnent ever been able run anything successfully?
Let's suppose you needed some work done on your house. You have a contractor come over and he gives you a quote. The contractor tells you, "I must have all the money up front, and I will be back within the next 4 years to finish the job." How many of you are going to hire this contractor? Well America, This is the deal that is being offered to you.
It is embarrassing and wrong for the United States of America to not provide good quality health care to its citizens. We need major reform of our corrupt health care system. Big corporations, including insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, make billions of dollars profit off the backs of sick and dying Americans. This is wrong. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to these powerful lobbyists. Obama and Harry Reid and most of the democrats are trying to make needed changes in our health care system. These companies do not want to lose any of their indecently huge profits. That is why they don't want things to change. Think about it.
Good luck and best wishes to President Obama, Senator Reid, Rahm and other leaders in Congress (Senator Rockefeller, Senator Dodd come to mind first) in carrying the ball across the goal line in the coming days and weeks. This bill is a "first step" in improving healthcare ACCESS, delivery, COST and sustainability to the most Americans possible.
How many Republicans voted for Social Security under FDR and the Civil Rights Amendment under LBJ? Less than seven, CUMULATIVE.
We await the Republican opposition of "no" and "over-extended conservative-Christian values" somehow being able to assign-attach the issue of " Afghan abortion rates" in some manner or way, to Afghanistan policy and decision making post President Obama's speech this coming Tuesday. However ludicrous, there is always some path to plugging in wedge social issues and negative analysis into big public policy decisions, whether healthcare or war.
I suppose the country is wealty enough we can afford these arguments. (?)
Healhcare restructuring will pass, with a public option, to provide a framework for curbing future costs to business and families, and then we can move on to other issues, first Afghanistan, and then....and so on. There are many issues in a fast changing country and world needing adjustments that are complex requiring sobering diligence. And there is not a state in the Union with a Governor who will refuse the public option, as an opt-in.
Gregory: the fact of the matter is that I'm not going to pay for your health care, medical marijuana, or government cheese. Pull up your trousers, put away the spray paint, and get a job.
mikeg--you assume 5 things about Gregory in 2 sentences and then criticize him for your suppositions. Reason much?
jw456: reason mulch? WTH is that supposed to mean? By the way, the assumptions total six! Seis, if you don't speak King Obama's English.
One has no 'right' to another's labor nor the fruits of another's labor...neither law nor regulation will work, as it is inherently immoral and certainly goes against basic human nature...do you understand this?...please get it!...I am growing weary of continuously stating the obvious...
Purgatory: Wrong, you are growing weary of being the obvious.
"How many Republicans voted for Social Security under FDR and the Civil Rights Amendment under LBJ? Less than seven, CUMULATIVE."
Err....somebody needs to stop drinking the koolaid and pick up a history book.
In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was mainly opposed by guess who.....Democrats.
LBJ had to work with Republicans to get enough support and votes to get it passed.
In the House, Republicans favored the bill 138 to 34; Democrats supported it 152-96.
In the Senate, the Democrats filibustered the bill for 52 straight days.
It was a Republican, Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, that forged a compromised and got the
bill passed out of the Senate even with 21 Democrats voting against the bill. All but 6 Republicans voted for the bill.
As for Social Security, a version of it was first proposed by Hoover, a Republican president. The final verison was voted into law by 81 Republicans voting in support of in the House and 16 of its members in the Senate.
You need to put down the koolaid and at least Google a little bit before making dumb statements. Just because Howard Dean has vocal chords does not mean every word that comes out his big fat mouth is true.
Health restructuring will likely lower the total amounts which we spend on health care and make care available to all. Single payer is the correct way to go. In the meantime thank our vets and others that each of us has the right to say lots of stupid things.
Sean Inssanity, said that while he was in Santa Barbara, CA, (getting an education and using the campus radio station subsidized by the government. UC Santa Barbara=taxpayer funded)
he broke his arm painting a house (wasn't Hitler a house painter?) anyway ...He then painted the doctor's office to work off his bill.
Moral of the story: if you come down with brain cancer, offer to paint the doctor's house.
As a business person, I want another bailout for the business sector. Bail out for the wealthy and stick it to the little guy, they don't vote, have no access to power, do not contribute to political campaigns......the average people do not run the country......
JSilver
My generation was born in freeedom and I do hope that no bill is passed that makes us die in slavery and causes our future generations to be born in it . Some things are obvious when they are not as they should be. From days gone by we have the emancipation out of the civil war and rightly so. Presently , this health debate that is a form of slavery that I don't want to trade my freedom,or finances for. Some time ago a guy named Patrick Henery once said "Give me liberty or give me death". A great nation was built on that philosophy and another defeated by it.
RE: Sgt Rock
I give you a 21 gun salute, sir. You are correct in your statement, and it is my responsibility to be factual in my comments. My source for my statement on how many Republicans voted for SS and Civil Rights was from DC, and I took it on face value.
Howard Dean, as well, made similar statements about SS and Medicare in a recent television appearance.
I am wrong on this, you are correct. For specific voting totals, one may google "Howard Dean, Republicans who voted for SS", and click on polito.com
Sadly, Republicans like Sen. Dirksen and those who voted for the Civil Rights Act would not pass their party's purity test today. Few moderate Republicans still survive in Congress. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of course signalled the end of Democratic dominance in the South. It also signalled the GOP's slow slide toward becoming a regional party.
My wife and I last flew out of your lovely city shortly before the last election. We have been frequent visitors for ten plus years. We only spend about 3-5K in 4-6 days. We are not high rollers. What we did not do this year was visit your city. Why? Your shop owners and union members supported Obama. Sorry, we like all of you, but; we come to Vegas to have fun- not talk or hear politics. All we heard in late Sept 2007 was politics. Had I not already paid $1100 plus for a suit(s) where your pit bosses go, I would have dumped them as the store owner made no bones Obama was his hero.