Schumer To Reid: The Fate Of The Public Option May Be In Your Hands

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) threw down the gauntlet on the public option for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last night. Appearing on The Rachel Maddow Show, Schumer essentially put the fate of the public option in Reid's hands -- saying that while the bill passed Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee doesn't include a public health insurance option, it's up to Reid to decide whether to include a public option in the bill that merges the Senate Finance Committee bill with the bills passed by others committees -- all of which do include a public option.

"Leader Reid has the option of putting it in the final bill," Schumer said of the public option. "If he puts it in the final bill, in the combined bill, then you would need 60 votes to remove it. And there clearly are not 60 votes against the public option. And so we're urging him to do that, and he's seriously considering it."

Schumer continued:

It's very important to see if a public option is in the bill that Leader Reid puts together. He hasn't yet made up his mind, but many of us who believe in the public option are urging him to do so, and so far we're getting heard.

Schumer said this solution might take some of the heat off conservative Democratic senators like Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Ben Nelson (D-NE), since they wouldn't have to explicitly vote to put the public option in the bill, but would merely have to support a bill that already included a public option.

"If it's in the bill, you don't have to have every Democrat vote for it, because if it's in the bill, to take it out would take 60 votes," Schumer said. "So that's one of the cases, one of those rare moments, where this 60-vote rule which we usually abhor works in our favor."

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...nds.php?ref=fpa

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But will he get 60 votes for cloture in a bill with the PO?

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From the NY Times:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, and [a] team of senators, aides and White House officials ... will meld the Finance Committee bill with an alternate version of the health-care legislation that was approved back in July by the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Mr. Reid will gather the group in his office on the second floor of the Capitol for its first official meeting on Wednesday. The group includes Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the Finance Committee chairman; Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who was acting chairman of the HELP committee when it passed its health care bill; and representatives of the White House.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said that Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the lone Republican on the Finance Committee to vote in favor of the bill, would be invited to future sessions.

...

The House bill will include a government-run insurance plan, or public option, to compete with private insurers. But Mr. Reid, and perhaps President Obama himself, may have to mediate that issue in the Senate.

Liberal senators want the public option. But Ms. Snowe is firmly opposed. She has expressed openness to a compromise that would allow a government-run health plan to be “triggered” in states where the legislation otherwise does not succeed in providing affordable insurance.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

From the NY Times:

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, and [a] team of senators, aides and White House officials ... will meld the Finance Committee bill with an alternate version of the health-care legislation that was approved back in July by the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Mr. Reid will gather the group in his office on the second floor of the Capitol for its first official meeting on Wednesday. The group includes Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the Finance Committee chairman; Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who was acting chairman of the HELP committee when it passed its health care bill; and representatives of the White House.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said that Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, the lone Republican on the Finance Committee to vote in favor of the bill, would be invited to future sessions.

...

The House bill will include a government-run insurance plan, or public option, to compete with private insurers. But Mr. Reid, and perhaps President Obama himself, may have to mediate that issue in the Senate.

Liberal senators want the public option. But Ms. Snowe is firmly opposed. She has expressed openness to a compromise that would allow a government-run health plan to be "triggered" in states where the legislation otherwise does not succeed in providing affordable insurance.

I wonder if this is similar to Schumer's idea of allowing states to opt out?

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Schumer's opt-out idea gives everyone in every state a public option and then allows individual states to opt out.

Snowe's trigger idea gives everyone in every state nothing to begin with and hold insurance companies to certain yet-to-be-defined metrics... if they don't meet the metrics, the public option kicks in. The devil, in this case, would be in the details of the metrics.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Interesting comment from a blogger:

Write a decent health care bill and dare Olympia Snowe to filibuster it. She won’t.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=28214

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Mr. Reid will gather the group in his office on the second floor of the Capitol for its first official meeting on Wednesday. The group includes Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the Finance Committee chairman; Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who was acting chairman of the HELP committee when it passed its health care bill; and representatives of the White House.

Rahm Emmanuel, the "Closer".

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Rep. Alan Grayson, garnering national attention recently for blasting Republicans on health care, says he's collected 90,000 signatures on a petition that criticizes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Olympia Snowe.

Grayson (D-FL) has teamed up with Progressive Change Campaign Committee and at 1:30 today will deliver the petitions to Capitol Hill that tell Reid:

"Any Democratic senators who support a Republican attempt to block a vote on health care reform should be stripped of their leadership titles ... Americans deserve a clean up-or-down vote on health care," and "For the last six months, Democrats have been dwelling, debating, and hoping for Republican Olympia Snowe to vote for health care reform. Why? Olympia Snowe was not elected President last year."

Grayson charges Reid (D-NV) should "lay down the law" with conservative Democrats on health care and called out Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) for saying he wasn't sure he'd support the bill.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10...ear.php?ref=fpb

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Americans deserve a clean up-or-down vote

That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

[Pooky 3,930]

Interesting comment from a blogger:

Write a decent health care bill and dare Olympia Snowe to filibuster it. She won’t.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=28214

Interesting, but wrong.

Put the Public Option in up front and Senator Snowe will vote against. Her position has been clear from the start.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Interesting comment from a blogger:

Write a decent health care bill and dare Olympia Snowe to filibuster it. She won’t.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=28214

Interesting, but wrong.

Put the Public Option in up front and Senator Snowe will vote against. Her position has been clear from the start.

She can vote against it. The question is whether she'll deny the American people an up-or-down vote on the measure in the Senate. The fact of the matter is that no principled, upstanding Republican should deny the up-or-down vote in the Senate. They've been demanding these up-or-down votes for years. Here's their chance to put their votes where their mouth is - or used to be.

[dalegg 143]

I don't mean to side with the lefties on this, but what exactly is any healthcare bill without a public option? From what I'm gathering it looks like a good way to insure that private insurance companies will actually make more money. If we get an insurance bill that does nothing but make it worse for people with existing coverage they like, force people to buy insurance from private insurance companies even if they don't want to, use public funds to pay private insurance companies, degrade medicare, and still leave millions of people uninsured, everyone here better promise to choose a third party in 2012.

[Joseph & Ana 0]

Putting pressure on Reid because Reid knows his neck is on the line and the public option could likely finish him in Nevada. He may back off the public option and Schumer knows it. This is why pressure is being put on Reid.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I don't mean to side with the lefties on this, but what exactly is any healthcare bill without a public option? From what I'm gathering it looks like a good way to insure that private insurance companies will actually make more money.

While there are more issues to be addressed aside from the insurance rip-off that costs each and every one of us dearly (on the delivery side of the equation), it does seem to be a good place to start. Seeing that this is where the starting point of the reform effort is, I agree that we should make it count. There's little to no justification, in my opinion, to advance a measure that does nothing but provide millions of new customers to the pimps of the broken system. At the very least, they need work for their money - i.e. become competitive by actually competing.

I mentioned this before and I mention it again. When we were faced with an insurance crisis here in Florida a few years back, the GOP run legislature came up with a solution that centered around - you guessed it - a public insurance option. Now, the insurance crisis we had here was homeowners insurance which became unaffordable or altogether unavailable to an ever growing number of Floridians. The private insurance market failed to produce the coverage the people needed. In light of that, our conservative, GOP run government stepped up and created Citizens Insurance - a public insurance option for homeowners. The result? Well, my private insurance coverage premiums have decreased better than 30% over the last couple of years.

Yes, you read that right. I still have private homeowners insurance coverage and it is available from many insurance companies as well as from the public plan. I have the choice of which insurance to go with - more choice and more affordable choices than I had before the public option was created. Contrary to what the naysayers would have you believe, the public option did not put the private insurers out of business but made them more competitive. It can work. Down here in Florida, it does work.