The public option is gaining steam in the Senate. Chuck Schumer became the 17th Senator to sign a letter asking Harry Reid for a reconciliation vote on the public option -- a letter that Chris Dodd has yet to sign:
Schumer just fired off an email to supporters in which he announced that he's added his name to the letter, which was initially spearheaded by Senator Michael Bennet and three other Senators. He wrote:
I just added my name to their effort to pass a public option through the reconciliation process, and I wanted you to be the first to know.
This is far from a done deal, but it's an opportunity to break through the obstructionism Republicans have pushed for the past year.
Not sure if Senator Dodd is waiting for an invitation to sign, but his name belongs on that letter too. A bunch of progressive groups (including CREDO) are doing a whip count. Click here if you want to join the effort and help get Dodd on the dotted line.
UPDATE: More Senators are on board (but not Dodd). Chris Bowers of OpenLeft has an updated whip count here.
The following Resolution was approved and adopted unanimously by the Wilton Democratic Town Committee:
Resolution Urging Senator Joseph Lieberman to Drop Filibuster Threat
and Support U.S. Senate Vote on Health Care Reform with Public Insurance Plan Option
WHEREAS Senator Joseph Lieberman has threatened to filibuster health reform legislation in the United States Senate, and to block a vote on a bill including a public insurance plan option
As you know, our Senior Senator Chris Dodd has been a champion for health care reform, standing firmly behind a public health insurance option, which 68% of Connecticut residents (and a large majority of the U.S.) support.
When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced earlier this week that a public option will be included in the Senate Bill, it was a direct result of Sen. Dodd's leadership on the issue.
And so Senator Reid deserves our thanks for standing with Chris Dodd -- and with us -- to put forward a health care bill with a public option. More importantly, since Senator Lieberman has threatened to side with Republicans and insurance companies, we want Senator Reid to turn a deaf ear to those threats. Let's tell Senator Reid that a majority of Connecticut residents stand with him and Senator Dodd, and urge them to pass health care reform with a public option, using the reconciliation process if necessary.
We, the undersigned residents of Connecticut, urge you on behalf of the 68% of our neighbors that want a public health insurance option to ignore Senator Lieberman's threats to side with the Republicans and insurance companies in blocking real reform and to use the reconciliation process to pass the Kennedy/Dodd public option if necessary.
In stating his opposition to a public health insurance option, Lieberman sounded familiar notes from reform's opponents, calling it a "government entitlement program" that will cost the government more money. Neither assertion is true. The public health insurance plan would be paid into, not subsidized, and as the Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly stated, the plan would reduce both premiums and government costs.
I present to you, The Doctor's Option (transcript for the video-impaired below the fold):
This is our video for Organizing for America and the Democratic National Committee's Health Reform Video Challenge. Written/Produced/Directed by Will Urquhart and Mitch Malasky. Starring Yvette Lewis and Dr. Joann Urquhart, MD. A special thanks to David Hart for helping to make this video happen.
If you enjoy this, please go to the video, rate it/comment on it/favorite it and share, share, share. The more attention it gets, the more likely OFA/DNC will pick it for the 20 finalists.
Next week, I'll sit down with Majority Leader Reid, Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, and the White House to merge together the provisions of the two health care bills that have been passed by Senate committees.
...
I understand that many of you are worried about what that bill will look like. I know first-hand how frustrating it has been to watch good ideas clash with political realities, especially on such an important issue.
...
But we have come too far, and worked too hard, to settle for "pretty good." And that's why I plan to take a stand.
First, and let me be very clear about this: I am going to fight for a strong public option. The simple, undeniable fact is that a public option will save money - and it will introduce more choice and competition into an industry that badly needs both. It is the single best way to keep costs low for middle class families - and keep the insurance companies honest. And I am by no means ready to back down on making that argument.
Standing alongside Vice President Joe Biden and 4th District Congressman Jim Himes (D-CT), Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) yesterday told a crowd of more than 400 supporters and guests how crucial the recovery program and health care reform are to the economy, then added emphatically: "We are going to get the public option" and received an extended, cheering ovation.
I can tell you because I was there.
The occasion was an event, featuring the Vice President, chosen to highlight transportation infrastructure investments flowing from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, at a site adjacent to a reconstruction project on Connecticut's Merritt Parkway near Exit 46 in Fairfield.
Dodd's remarks came as he and other Senate leaders prepare for expected health care bill merger sessions. That is assuming that the bill passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee -- which has a public option -- is to be merged with one yet-to-be-passed by the Finance Committee -- which does not. A vote in the Finance Committee has reportedly been delayed again.
Sorry for the shortness of this diary. I'm doing it at work. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has been doing incredible work trying to keep progressive members in Congress from buckling under and giving up on the public option. With Max Baucus' release of his "plan"--worse than worthless--she has sent out an email urging folks to call their Reps and "ask them to oppose any health care plan without a strong public option."
While making the rounds of Town Hall meetings throughout Fairfield County, Congressman Jim Himes expressed strong support not only for health care reform, but also for the public option. His general support of the public option is encouraging and important to getting the bill passed.
What's confusing, however, is that Himes tends to withhold full support for HR 3200 because he says it doesn't do a good job of cutting costs.
"The bill is lazy and long-term untenable in respect to cutting costs," he said. "We have not taken up the hard and terribly necessary work of figuring out a way to create a system that incentivizes citizens to be healthier and incentivizes the whole process to keep us healthy. Right now, everyone is paid to fix us when we're broken. Nobody is paid anything to teach us how to be healthy."
Actually, HR 3200 includes a number of measures aimed specifically at what he's talking about. In the Kaiser Foundation's summary of the bill, it lists several "cost containment" measures as well as prevention/"quality" measures. Here are a few:
Modify provider payments under Medicare including:
- Modify market basket updates to account for productivity improvements for inpatient hospital, home health, skilled nursing facility, and other Medicare providers; and
- Reduce payments for potentially preventable hospital readmissions. [...]
Develop a national strategy to improve the nation's health through evidenced-based clinical and community-based prevention and wellness activities. Create task forces on Clinical Preventive Services and Community Preventive Services to develop, update, and disseminate evidenced-based recommendations on the use of clinical and community prevention services.
Improve prevention by covering only proven preventive services in Medicare and Medicaid. Eliminate any cost-sharing for preventive services in Medicare and increase Medicare payments for certain preventive services to 100% of actual charges or fee schedule rates.
There are several more such items listed, but these never seem to come up in any of Congressman Himes' discussions. It's commendable that Himes would like to see more cost-cutting and prevention measures in the bill. But I wish he would share some of his cost-cutting ideas with us rather than give the impression that bill contains no cost-cutting or prevention measures at all.
Regressive Senator Joe Lieberman sat down last week with the Connecticut Post for a long interview and online question session. Among the first questions was about his supposed change in support for a public option from 2004 when he ran an ill-fated campaign for President. Liberman explained that his proposal then was nothing like what is being proposed by others now. And that is true. It's certainly easier to call your plan something it isn't when you're running for the highest office in the land.
Lieberman was also mocked for his support of the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation which will end up costing taxpayers north of a trillion dollars (more in real dollars than the Vietnam war, inflation adjusted) yet won't support meaningful health care reform. You can watch the full length video at the CT Post site. Apparently that was Donald Rumsfeld's fault...
STAMFORD -- U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman made it clear Wednesday that he would not vote for a health care bill that included a government-run option, but said that without it, he and most of Congress would support comprehensive health care reform.
Discussion on health care dominated an informal question-and-answer session with the fourth-term Connecticut senator, who spoke to the editors of The Advocate and Connecticut Post and answered e-mailed questions from readers.
If the public option "is off the table, we have the opportunity to achieve significant reform with bipartisan support," Lieberman said during the nearly two-hour meeting Wednesday afternoon.
The Wilton, CT Democratic Town Committee tonight unanimously approved a strong Resolution for health care reform with a public insurance option, and urged representatives in Congress to stand with them at every stage of the legislative process.
The Resolution comes on the heels of a contentious public event Sunday, August 30 outside Wilton Town Hall where Congressman Jim Himes -- faced with a group using fear, prejudice and ignorance -- spoke with courage, conviction and intelligence about the need for a public insurance option as part of real health care reform in America.
The New York Times editorial writers have their brains tied up in knots. Today's lead editorial "The Public Plan" abandons any semblance of clarity. In a single editorial, they refer to the public plan as both "not indispensable" and "the best way to give Americans real choice".
At least it took Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius a couple of days to accomplish that kind of gymnastic maneuver.
Perhaps someone in the Obama administration or Congressional leadership thought this weekend's noises from the White House backing away from the public option in favor of "co-ops" would encourage Republicans (like Chuck Grassley, who thinks government is a "predator") to finally jump on board the bipartisan health care fun-train. Needless to say, it's not happening.
Yesterday, under the premature assumption that the public option had been declared dead, the Republican National Committee set their sights on the next "compromise" goalpost by sending a release around to reporters claiming that, to them, co-ops were really just evil "government health care" by another name:
The RNC forwarded a press release/research memo to reporters today claiming that a "'public option' by any other name is still government health care." But does it smell as sweet? Probably not to supporters of a true public option, and it was perhaps out of a desire to alleviate those concerns (and pose a future co-op passage as a White House victory) that Reid deemed co-ops as "some type of public option" in early July--a quote the RNC references prominently.
Chris Healy apparently also got the memo (if not that official RNC spellcheck software he's still waiting on). He too may have looked a bit too far down the field in a blog post yesterday:
And what about this co-op idea? It's just another name for the same bad deal. Co-op sounds benign. You buy vegatble [sic] and books at co-ops. You can live in a co-op in Manhatten [sic] and still be rich. But a co-op under the Obama means a large subsidy for a very large non-profit that will always be fed.
Co-ops, of course, are the latest in a series of unilateral Democratic "compromises" that have yet to - and will not - attract a single Republican. The public option was originally such a compromise position itself. Democratic members of Congress can now simply not escape the already-obvious fate of any such compromise: it will win no Republican votes, it will make any "reform" less effective and more expensive, and, crucially, it will result in Democrats in general and progressives in particular being blamed at the voting booth for the ensuing policy failure - and Republicans being rewarded for it.
As you may have suspected, the Medicare-style public option that you thought you were fighting for isn't the same "public option" that's coming out of committees in the Senate and the House. Not even close.
In a must-read diary at the Physicians for a National Health Program blog, Kip Sullivan describes how Congressional Democrats, and even some progressive groups, are using a classic bait-and-switch to redefine the public option and sell us a useless watered-down version:
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the "public option" proposed in the House "tri-committee" bill might insure 10 million people and would leave 16 to 17 million people uninsured. The "public option" proposed by the Senate HELP committee, again according to the Congressional Budget Office, is unlikely to insure anyone and would hence leave 33 to 34 million uninsured. The CBO said its estimate of 10 million for the House bill was highly uncertain, which is not surprising given how vaguely the House legislation describes the "public option." [...]
Obviously the "public option" in the Senate HELP committee bill (zero enrollees; 34 million people left uninsured) and the "public option" in the House bill (10 million enrollees (maybe!); 17 million people left uninsured) are a far cry from the "public option" originally proposed by Professor Hacker (129 million enrollees; 2 million people left uninsured).
Go read Sullivan's diary to understand how the original public option is nothing like what's coming out of Congress, including the one drafted by the Senate HELP Committee.
This morning, the Health Care bill in Senator Dodd's HELP committee passed on a party line 13-10 vote with a public option, a victory for the position Dodd outlined to the MLN community back in June. The pressure from the netroots on key Dem holdouts in the committee seems to have been effective. This is just one fight out of many, as the Senate Finance committee now has to pass their bill out of committee as well.
There were no Republican votes for the bill despite Republicans having four weeks worth of opportunities in markup, and using those four weeks to do things like refuse to accept their own amendments in order to prolong the process and attempt to kill the bill's momentum.
If this is the kind of "bipartisanship" we can look forward to in the coming weeks the Senate (and it surely is), then the Democratic leadership, with three-quarters of Americans on their side, should feel no compunction about using reconciliation to get a bill with a public option through:
"It's not the first priority, or the second priority, or the third priority. We think we can get it done without it," Emanuel said.
Yet reconciliation "exists as an alternative vehicle," he said. "That's what it was created for."
"The American people demanded legislation that protects their choice of doctors, hospitals, and insurance plans; cuts costs for families, businesses, and the federal government; and ensures that, in the wealthiest nation in the world, everyone has access to affordable, high-quality care. This time, we have produced the legislation Americans wanted. This time, we have delivered on the promise of real change."
When the HELP Committee started "marking up" health legislation in Kennedy's absence a few weeks back, the whole endeavor had fallen into disarray. It fell to Kennedy's closest friend in the Senate -- Chris Dodd -- to pick up the pieces. "I got saddled with this responsibility, obviously at a late hour," Dodd said wryly as the committee prepared to vote. Yet Dodd's effort was extraordinary, and the bill that emerged is everything Ted would have wanted it to be....
This is a revealing moment from Monday's markup of the health care bill in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee that illustrates the level of procedural obstruction Senate Republicans are willing to rise to in order to impede its progress and in the hopes of killing its momentum.
At the opening of Monday's hearing, Sen. Dodd asked Sen. Enzi (R-WY), the ranking Republican on the committee, if he would agree to accept by unanimous consent a total of 64 Republican amendments. After a whisper from an aide, Enzi, a little perplexed and not a little embarrassed, refused to allow the 64 Republican amendments to be accepted, lowering his voice to mumble, "I think some of our members want votes on some of those." Dodd's visible exasperation and disbelief is priceless.
Sen. Enzi's pitiful performance here is visual proof of the aim of Senate Republicans - which is not to have their amendments heard, voted on, and accepted, but rather to drag out the legislative process as long as possible on health care reform. And they have many reasons to want to do so, as Brian Beutler at TPM notes:
if Congress enters recess with weeks of work left to do, party leaders may have to make a call; and those who oppose passing health care through the reconciliation process -- Republicans and some Democrats -- might be trying to run out the clock -- to call leadership's bluff, or, at the very least, to touch off a game of legislative chicken.
This is just one example and there are certainly many more ways for those in both Houses opposed to the bill generally and the public option specifically to impede its progress in the coming days. For instance, work on the Senate HELP bill, delayed as it has been, is far ahead of that on the Senate Finance bill.
And with some Democrats, like Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), using the bill's uncertain fate in the Senate to pre-emptively excuse themselves for signaling that they fully intend to vote for a bill without a public plan, whipping the public option in the House is likely the only shot progressives inside and outside of Congress have to ensure a public option remains in the final bill.
If it doesn't succeed, if those who say they support a public option - like John Larson, Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro, Jim Himes, and Chris Murphy - refuse to draw a line in the sand now in the full knowledge that a public option is likely to be ripped out of the final bill if they don't, it's silly not to expect the delaying and obstructing of Mike Enzi and his allies in the Senate to win out over progressive "good intentions" and strategic ineptitude in the end.
The Hill reports today on a letter to the Speaker signed by 22 members of the New Democrat and Blue Dog caucuses - including Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney, both New Dems - stating their support for a "robust" public option that competes on a level playing field with private health care plans.
The letter, unsurprisingly, doesn't address where these 22 members draw a line in the sand - the point at which they will refuse to vote for a health care reform bill that will surely be whittled away in the committee, floor, and conference fights to come in the coming weeks in both houses - or whether they are preemptively saying they will vote for any bill no matter how horrible it is.
It does, however, shed some light on what appears to be some real fracturing of the New Democrat Caucus on the health care fight:
Many New Dems criticized their leaders and said they have not liked being lumped in with opponents of the bill, particularly the public plan.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), a relatively new member of the group, said it should consider reviewing its practices....
"There is some concern that some decisions come only from talk among New Dem leadership rather than the broader leadership," said a New Democrat lawmaker. "A lot of decisions are made by New Dem leadership and not broadly discussed in membership meetings."
There's a very easy way for worried individual members interested in salvaging a real, workable public option - like 72% of Americans - to avoid being "lumped in" with those in their caucus who are pulling out all the stops to gut this bill even more and turn it into an insurance industry giveaway: by letting us know that you pledge to vote against any bill that does not contain a public option that is (1) available nationwide (2) on day one and (3) accountable to Congress and voters.
While there continues to be much talk of "support" for a public option, neither John Larson, Joe Courtney, Rosa DeLauro, Jim Himes, nor Chris Murphy have told us where their "line in the sand" is on this bill. If we want to have any chance of seeing a public option in the final bill, we need to know where they stand now.
As Rahm Emanuel unilaterally declares a public option not to be a necessity for the Obama administration (for the second time in two weeks), and President Obama himself finds himself walking back his chief of staff's comments from halfway across the globe, the need for a progressive bloc in the House of Representatives who will stand together and pledge to vote against reform-in-name only, making a real public option a necessity for any health care bill's passage this year, gets only clearer and clearer.
In CT, Joe Courtney is the latest Connecticut Representative to refuse to commit to voting against any health care plan without a workable, robust public option. Campaign Silo has the audio from his appearance last week on WNPR's "Where We Live":
This echoes Courtney's recent comments at a town hall meeting with constituents in DC, where he also refused to commit to vote against a health care bill without a public plan.
Our representatives need to know that at this point in the legislative process, voicing "support" for a public option means very little. What we need desperately are Democrats committed to real health care reform - like Jerry Nadler in New York - with the courage and the conviction to say loud and clear that a bill without a public option will be dead on arrival in the House.
Joe now joins Rosa DeLauro in refusing to be part of this effort. Apparently "Where We Live" will be hosting Rosa and the remainder of the Connecticut House delegation in the coming days and weeks (Chris Murphy was on yesterday), so constituents can continue to call in.
Here's how the citizen whip count of targeted progressive representatives (specifically, whether they will pledge to vote against any bill that does not contain a public option that is (1) available nationwide (2) on day one and (3) accountable to Congress and voters) stands as of today. You can contact your representative using the info here and report their response using the whip count tool here.
Previous "Whipping the Public Option in CT" posts:
Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittman attempts to explain his boss's untenable position on the public option to the Huffington Post, and gets it exactly wrong. At least twice:
Contrary to the suggestion that Senator Lieberman is a "health care spoiler," the opposite is true because Senator Lieberman is working hard to build a coalition to pass a health care reform bill. Although he does not support a public option that would be cost prohibitive and would make it very unlikely to pass a bill, he strongly supports health care reform that expands access, lowers costs and increases quality of care.
1) The public option in the new HELP bill lowered the CBO price tag from $1 trillion over 10 years to $600 billion over 10 years.
2) All 13 Democrats on the HELP committee have now said they will support the public option proposal under consideration there. There would likely be many more than 50 Democratic votes for a public option in the Senate. The only way a public option makes it "unlikely" that that bill will pass the Senate is if Senators like Mitch McConnell and Joe Lieberman decide to block the bill through a filibuster. You know... if they act like "spoilers".
Furthermore, with more and more progressive Representatives - now including Rep. Nadler (D-NY) - pledging to vote against any final bill that does not include a public option, Wittman and his boss are (intentionally, of course) getting the politics wrong too.
A public option will be a necessity for this bill's passage through this Congress, not a hindrance.
Via FDL, Rosa DeLauro becomes the first Connecticut Representative to pledge to vote against any health care bill that does not include a robust public option.
Update: Posted too soon. Apparently Rosa's staff has clarified her position, and she has been moved out of the "committed" column.
For a more detailed take on why this particular strategy is so crucial, see this post.
Ask all of the members the Connecticut delegation (including Rosa) to pledge to vote against any bill that does not contain a public option that is (1) available nationwide, (2) on day one, and (3) accountable to Congress and the voters, and report any response to the FDL whip count tool here:
MLN is powered by