Democratic senator: Public health insurance option dead
WASHINGTON (CNN)—A key Senate negotiator said Sunday that President Barack Obama should drop his push for a government-funded public health insurance option because the Senate will never pass it.
Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota said it was futile to continue to “chase that rabbit” due to the lack of 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster.
“The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been,” Conrad said on “FOX News Sunday.”
Conrad is one of six Senate Finance Committee members—three Democrats and three Republicans—who are negotiating a compromise health-care bill that would be the only bipartisan proposal so far.
Three House bills and another Senate version have all been proposed by Democrats, and all contain provisions for a public health insurance option intended to compete against private insurers.
Republican opponents argue the public option is a step toward the government taking over the health care industry. Many Democrats argue that it would not have that effect.
Conrad has proposed creating non-profit health insurance cooperatives that could negotiate coverage as a collective for their members.
He said Sunday that such cooperatives would provide the competition sought by Obama and Democratic leaders to force private insurers to hold down costs and improve practices.
Obama continues to support a public insurance option but appears to have softened his position in recent weeks.
At a town hall meeting Saturday in Colorado, he said the issue is one of many that are critical to successfully overhauling the ailing health-care system. “All I’m saying is, though, that the public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,” Obama said. “This is just one sliver of it.”
On Sunday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNN’s “State of the Union” that a final health-care bill will meet Obama’s requirements of affordable, accessible health coverage for all.
“There will be a competition to private insurers,” she said. “You don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices and we need some competition.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 16, 2009 05:53 PM | Send