Blog - Articles Tagged 'Public option'

Some liberals have been pushing Democrats to include a public option in the reconciliation bill for health care (H.R.4872). The party's response: a public option can't be included because doing so would complicate things by forcing the House to re-vote on the updated version of the bill. So what's going to happen now that the House has to re-vote on the bill anyway?

Wondering how we got from Sen. Scott Brown [R, MA] being elected in Massachusetts to kill health care reform to the health care bill, and maybe even the public option, being back on the table with a strong feeling of momentum behind it?

The big news with the plan released today by the White House isn't really about its contents, it's about its format. The White House could have put out a full bill, written in legalese and numbering hundreds of pages, and then tried to push it through Congress. Instead, the plan seems to be designed to accommodate new ideas.

Has the final shoe dropped in the recent boomlet of enthusiasm for the public option? Greg Sargent posts a statement from the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D, NV] offering generic support for passing a public option through the Senate under reconciliation: If a decision is made to use reconciliation to advance health care, Senator Reid will work with the White House, the House, and members of his caucus in an effort to craft a public option that can overcome procedural obstac...

We're now just six days away from the big bipartisan, live-on-the-TV health care summit that President Obama will hold next week with leaders from Congress. Here's a quick update on where things stand.

As of today, 18 Senators have signed a letter supporting the use of the reconciliation process to pass a public option. Now, the president's HHS secretary is implying that he could join the effort as well.

The public option, declared dead time and time again throughout the health care reform process, is once again showing faint signs of life. As I mentioned before, four Senate Democrats the week signed onto a letter urging their colleagues to pass the public option through the Senate under reconciliation – a process that requires 51 votes instead of the 60 now mandated by near-constant GOP filibustering. Since the letter was released, 16 Senate Democrats have signed on. The majority of thes...

Could the public option rise from the grave? Four Democratic Senators have urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D, NV] to use the reconciliation process to revive the idea that was formerly dropped from the Senate health care bill (H.R.3590). In a letter, which you can read here, Sen. Michael Bennet [D, CO], Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D, NY], Sen. Jeff Merkley [D, OR] and Sen. Sherrod Brown [D, OH] spell out four reasons for once again pushing the public option: [I]ts potential for b...

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne previews the final health care bill and the concessions progressive House Democrats are getting in exchange for giving up the public option.

Igor Volsky at the Wonk Room suggests that the Senate could strengthen their provision that allows states to set up their own public options by providing start-up funds

The highly influential Majority Whip, Rep. James Clyburn [D, SC], whose job is basically to tell rank and file House Democrats how to vote, said over the weekend that he could support a health care bill that does not create a public option.

By a vote of 60 to 39, the Senate early this morning officially approved health care legislation designed to meet President Obama’s goals of reducing health care costs, increasing choices for consumers and guaranteeing access to quality, affordable insurance for all Americans. All 60 Democrats in the Senate, plus the two Independents, voted in favor of the bill. All 39 Republicans who were present voted "no." Sen. Jim Bunning [R, KY] skipped the vote.

At 1:25 this morning, the Senate voted to defeat a Republican filibuster of the Democrats' health care bill. The vote brings the Senate beyond the last big hurdle remaining for the bill and virtually guarantees that it will see final approval before the Senate leave town on Christmas Eve for recess.

As recently as September 8, 2009, Sen. Joe Lieberman [I, CT] was pushing to allow people to buy into Medicare. This weekend, he said that he would vote to filibuster any health care bill that contains such a provision.

Democrats in the Senate have negotiated a new deal to break the impasse on health care reform. It involves getting rid of the public option altogether, but, somehow, all the liberal Democrats seem to like it. It appears to have three parts: