White House, Senate Dems Ready To Pull Plug On Public Option?
What had been a core component of the health care agenda of President Obama and congressional Democrats - and also an important part of what would make the president’s health insurance reform proposals actual “reform” - is increasingly looking like it may be left on the cutting room floor as administration officials and Senate Democrats are finding the reality of a public plan too overwhelming to foster a workable legislative deal for reform.
Two voices casting doubt on the future of the biggest item on the wishlist of liberals and the president were Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and moderate Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad, a key member of the team working on bipartisan reform negotiations on the Finance Committee.
Sebelius appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday and told John King that a government-run plan “is not an essential element” to robust health care reform legislation. She also intimated that the White House is warming to the idea of insurance co-op’s as a replacement for a full public plan that would attract moderate Republicans and Democrats.
“I think there will be a competition to private insurers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in an interview that aired Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “that really is the essential part, that you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace [after health care legislation is enacted] to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.”
At a town hall in Grand Junction, Colorado Saturday, Mr. Obama seemed to downplay the necessity of having a public insurance option in the final version of any health care reform legislation presented to him by Congress.
“The public option – whether we have it or we don’t have it – is not the entirety of health care reform,” the President said. “This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it. And, by the way, it’s both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else . . .”
Echoing Mr. Obama’s Saturday comments, Sebelius also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that “what’s important is choice and competition.” A public option “is not an essential element,” the Cabinet secretary said Sunday.
North Dakota’s Conrad went on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss the state of insurance reform in the Senate and put the stakes of forcing a public option into any bill more bluntly. Conrad said the idea of a public plan was a “wasted effort” in the Senate because “there are not the votes” for public in the Senate and “there never have been.”
“Look, the fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the U.S. Senate for the public option, there never have been,” Conrad said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.”
“So to continue to chase that rabbit is, I think, a wasted effort,” Conrad said.
Conrad also threw some cold water on the push for a mid-September deadline to get a bipartisan deal out of the Finance Committee.
Conrad also suggested Finance may not make a mid-September deadline for reaching an agreement. He said the six senators on the panel who are working on a compromise have agreed to “be ready when we’re ready,” While Conrad said they hope to reach a conclusion by mid-September, they won’t be bound by that timeframe.
“This is not something that should be held hostage to any specific deadline,” he said.
While scrapping public option has a chance to expedite bipartisan support in the Senate and appease House Blue Dogs, the problem for the White House will come, again, outside the strictly legislative arena.
The president would have the difficult task of publicly going back on both a campaign pledge (you cannot cover a vast majority of the uninsured without a public plan) and something he promised the American people all throughout the bitter health care debate; that there will be a government-run plan to keep private insurers “honest” and cover the uninsured and under-insured. Most experts agree that insurance reform without some form of a public fall-back is not truly reform.
But none of this will matter to Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and the town hall mobs. The conservative opposition to the president and his health care agenda - whatever form that ultimately takes - will not stop stirring up emotions and blasting a “government takeover” just because a public plan might be replaced by Kent Conrad’s co-ops.
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Why can’t just those why pay taxes get health benefits…how b’out that Obama and the rest of the health care reform starters??? NO seriously, this I could be in favor of, but not just letting any old person that comes to America, even the illegal’s to get health care and our taxes go up the roof???? No, sure, I will cont. to fight this…