Battle over healthcare public option continues

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee rejected an amendment that would have added a public option to their health care bill. John Nichols at The Nation thinks this is very bad news.

Maggie Mahar at has a very different analysis over at Health Beat.

We knew that the Senate Finance Committee would reject the public sector option. Now they have done just that.

This is not news. Nor is this a “fatal blow” for progressives.

Will the public option survive a vote on the Senate floor? Probably not—though it could happen. But this still does not mean that the public option is dead.

We know that the bill that emerges from the House will contain a MedicareE (for Everyone) alternative. The House bill and the Senate bill will then go to conference. This is the moment that matters. As a respected HealthBeat reader who knows Washington well recently told me, “Everything else is foreplay.” Much of what we are reading now is posturing--by some politicians ( Charles Schumer deserves an Emmy), by some pundits and by unnamed sources who want reporters to think that they know more than they actually know.

I would be happier if I thought both the Senate and the House bill would include a public option. But that isn’t necessary. All that is necessary is to get a bill through the House, and a bill through the Senate, with or without MedicareE. In Conference, where the two bills are merged, they can put the public option back in.

This all depends on the White House stepping up to support a public option. Mahar thinks that President Obama and his aides will do just this because their political survival depends on delivering health care reform that really works.

When Mahar refers to "MedicareE" it looks as if she's referring to a version of the public option that would allow everyone who wanted to do so to sign up for Medicare, even if they had not yet reached age 65. It would be very good news if this is so, but such a proposal is much stronger than anything in the original language of HR 3200. (I'm reading the darned thing, so I have some clue what I'm talking about.)

Meanwhile Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin insists that a bill including the public option could pass the full Senate by a "comfortable margin."