Pelosi asks if Blue Dogs Are In; the Senate Opts Out
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised the House version of the health-care bill will include a “public option,” a government health insurance plan that would compete with existing private plans. But she’s still trying to figure out what that public plan will look like.
That’s because the two sides of her party can’t agree. Progressive Democrats want a “robust” public option that would be similar to Medicare, but the conservative Democrats, many of them Blue Dogs, want a public plan that pays doctors and hospitals more than Medicare does.
According to the New York Times, Pelosi told lawmakers Thursday that she had more than 200 votes for the “robust” option, but is finding it difficult to reach the 218 she needs. that was a day before House Democratic Caucus Chairman John B. Larson (D-Conn.) polled Dems to see who would support a robust public option. “The results,” the Times reported, “were not definitive because many members were missing and some supported the bill but called for changes.”
On Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) predicted the House bill would be a cinch to pass. “I think that Blue Dogs bark but never bite, so I don’t think they have a problem over in the House side,” the former Republican presidential nominee said on the talk show Face the Nation.
Meanwhile big news from the Senate . . . Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) chose to put a public option in the Senate bill. As our colleague Greg Sargent reported, Reid plans a compromise in the form of an “opt-out” clause, allowing individual states to choose not to offer the public plan.
Who Runs Gov,
My name is Barbara O’ Brien and my blogging at The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, AlterNet, and elsewhere on the progressive political and health blogophere has earned me the notoriety of being a panelist at the Yearly Kos Convention and a featured guest blogger at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC.
I’m contacting you because I found your site in a health reform blog search and want to tell you about my newest blogging platform —the public concern of health care and its reform. Our shared concerns include health reform, tort reform, public health, safe workplaces, and asbestos contamination.
To increase awareness on these important issues, my goal is to get a resource link on your site or even allow me to provide a guest posting. Please contact me back, I hope to hear from you soon. Drop by our site http://www.maacenter.org/blog in the meantime.
Thanks,
Barbara O’ Brien
barbaraobrien@maacenter.org