"Is the tide turning for the public option?"

[Clio the Leo]

Note, I do not believe that this article's claim that the CBO will be done scoring the Baucus Bill by Thursday is correct. Everything I read yesterday said the vote would not be until next week. That being said...

Is the tide turning for the public option?
As healthcare reform moves to backroom talks, supporters say its chances may be improving

By Mike Madden

Oct. 6, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- None of the various healthcare reform bills kicking around Congress would order doctors to make house calls. But the White House decided that was exactly the treatment the administration's top domestic priority needed to maintain some legislative momentum. And so about 150 physicians showed up on the Rose Garden lawn Monday morning for a pep rally -- with at least one coming from every state, naturally, the better to gin up local media coverage of the event back home.

<snip>

The stirring rhetoric wasn't the only point of the rally, though, and the target audience wasn't only the people watching or reading about Obama's remarks. A close look at the physicians standing on the stage with the president showed some of the backstage maneuvering involved. Those doctors weren't just chosen for their looks. The surgeon on the podium with him? He came from Maine. The OB-GYN was from Nebraska, the allergist from Florida and the oncologist from Arkansas. Not coincidentally, all four states are home to senators whose votes the White House will need when healthcare reform hits the floor in the next few weeks.

As Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House try to move healthcare legislation along, the battle over the legislation is entering an increasingly arcane realm of backroom negotiations and procedural votes. The lawmakers from those states who are being courted -- Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine and Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas -- are likely to hear all about how their doctor constituents joined Obama to push for reform. Public events and private talks alike are being planned with one goal in mind: to find a Senate coalition of at least 60 votes to get the legislation past any GOP attempts to filibuster it.

That isn't necessarily bad news for progressives hoping to ensure the bill includes a strong government-run public option as part of a proposed insurance exchange system for people whose employers don't cover them, though. Congressional aides and outside activists say the White House is still pushing for the public option in private talks. A growing number of Democrats in the Senate say they think the bill will include some form of public option, including Majority Leader Harry Reid and health committee chairman Tom Harkin. "President Obama has said all along that the public health insurance option is his first choice" for making health insurance affordable, said Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, a union-backed coalition that supports reform. "We want to make sure he gets his first choice."

The version of the bill that the Senate Finance Committee is working on doesn't include a public option. But supporters think they may be able to preserve it, nonetheless. Finance will vote on its bill later this week -- probably Thursday -- after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office calculates how much it will cost. (When that work might be finished isn't clear; a CBO official told me it would be done "when it's done," and insisted on anonymity to pass along such an informative piece of news.) The committee is likely to pass the bill, mostly written by Montana Democrat Max Baucus, and that will set off more private talks between top Senate Democrats and members of the Finance panel and the more liberal health committee, which has already passed its own version of the bill.

<snip>

The administration may not want to say exactly what form of public option Obama would or wouldn't be willing to accept; press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Monday that aides were "still working to make sure that we have choice and competition in this legislation," but he wouldn't go into any details. But as the White House house call -- and the careful stage managing -- Monday morning showed, aides are looking for votes wherever they can find them.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/10/06/public_option/

[ShortnFiery]

1. The Great Deceit.

And we are falling for it. :(

[dionysus]

8. if we get a public option will you feel silly for pushing so much fail?

or will you then declare whatever we get isn't single payer therefore sucks?

because not a single thread of good news will go by without you pushing failure in it.

[Aramchek]

10. if you were the sole determiner of what is possible, Obama would have never been elected

thank god your powers of prediction are greatly lacking.

[SIMPLYB1980]

11. LOL! Fail.

[Jennicut]

2. Support was there all along, once the media stopped giving all the coverage to the extreme idiots.

[Mass]

3. Does he mean the tide in the Senate? Because, in the general public, the tide has been continually

for a public option?

However, the real question is what type of public option, as some people call Cantwell's amendment or Conrad's coops a public option. The devil is in the details here.

[Autumn]

4. They better make sure Obama gets his " first choice"

with a strong public option. Otherwise they can be "looking for votes wherever they can find them" in 2012.

[Uben]

5. The tide was always headed towards a PO....

... it's just that the republicans, media, and corporate insurance money have been doing their damnedest to tell people it wasn't!
We'll get a PO...in some form.

[harun]

9. Exactly, the ebb was created by the media, it never happened with the Public.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. Imo, the only question has been what form it will take.

It ranges from shitty to not-too-shabby.

[Peacetrain]

7. Can I have a cup that "not to shabby"...

:)