Update: Unfortunately, Schumer hadn't yet talked to Joe Lieberman before we had that interview.
"I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company," Lieberman added. "It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid."
Lieberman said he "very much" wants to vote for health care reform but that he’s worried about stifling "the economic recovery we’re in" or adding to the federal debt.
"I feel this way about a national, government-created health insurance company – whether it’s a trigger or not," he said. "My answer is – we’re – we have the opportunity to do some great reforms here. These exchanges that we’re talking about, I think, are going to drive competition and probably bring the cost of health insurance down or at least contain the cost increases for a lot of people. Let’s give that two or three years to see how it works to see how it works before we talk about creating another entitlement that will end up increasing the national debt and putting more of a burden on taxpayers."
Even Snowe's trigger is unacceptable to Mr. With-Us-on-Everything-But-the-War. Looks like reconciliation for this bill better be put back on the table, and Sen. Lieberman should be immediately stripped of his committee chair and membership in the caucus.
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I spoke with Sen. Chuck Schumer this morning to discuss the Senate healthcare bill and where we go from here. On some issues, he wasn't able to provide much information. They don't know how long it will take the CBO to complete it's scoring, so a timeline for floor action is still up in the air. Likewise, until the scoring is back, there aren't concrete specifics to discuss in the opt out public option. Similarly, without the CBO scoring, he wouldn't speculate on which provisions might be possible to implement in 2010.
On the substance of the opt out, I asked about the rumor Chuck Todd has been reporting this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe and Dr. Nancy shows that the opt out public option plan is a sort of starting point to get to the real compromise, which will be opt in. Sen. Schumer shot that one down. He hadn't "heard of that one," and said that was not Reid's intention. It's not on the table as far as he knows.
He discussed the process by which they landed on opt out, and he stressed that it appealed to "a good number of moderates," and while there were "a number of moderates who didn't like it, [they] would still help us move forward with the bill."
Everyone is going to have to give, and particularly now that it seems the Republicans--hopefully Olympia Snowe will come back and continue talking to us--but the overwhelming majority of Republicans are just "no" no matter what we do. You have to find a bill to pass that's somewhere in the middle of the caucus and not everyone, probably not even one person, is going to be completely pleased with it. But the good news here, and this is very good news, I think every member of our caucus, all 60, from the most liberal to the most moderate, believe that we have to get a bill. So everyone is willing to give a little to get a good bill....
The fact that the Republicans have sort of absented themselves from the process says to our caucus on both sides, both Houses, stay unified and we'll get this done and we'll change America for the better, change the people have been waiting for for several generations.
For all the Villagers working on the new narrative that Harry Reid is taking a big gamble on his vote count, Schumer this response: "Fortunately Harry Reid is the leader, because there's no one better at figuring that out than him. I've been a legislator for 35 years and I've never seen anyone as good at it as he is.... I wouldn't bet against Leader Reid."
I asked whether he felt that the Senate was all hampered in terms of deficit neutrality and costs on other aspects of the bill because they weren't including the same robust public option. "The stronger the public option," he says, "the more it keeps the insurance companies in line and keeps the honest and the more it saves costs. There's no question about it."
That makes a strong argument for the House moving forward with the strongest possible public option. The stronger one version is going into conference, the better the chances of getting something strong back out.
Beyond the public option there are a lot of moving parts to this bill. I asked which were of particular concern to Senate progressives, and what should activists be keeping an eye on. His answers weren't surprising. First, affordability: " You can't force people to buy an insurance plan they can't afford. It's much better to get the insurance companies to reduce the costs, and that's something I think many of us have been working towards."
Second, fairness for union members and workers in high risk jobs who have so-called Cadillac plans, "who made a decision that they get paid a low salary but get very good healthcare benefits," and making sure that they "don't get penalized."
We know that the insurance companies are going to redouble their efforts to fight this reform now that it's become real. I asked Schumer to respond to reports that one insurer has targeted Kay Hagan to have subscribers send postcards opposing the public option. In short, he doesn't think it will work.
I think the American people overwhelmingly want healthcare reform. I think they're overwhelmingly skeptical of the insurance companies. So you know, if they're going to try below the belt hits . . . I think we'll be up to combating it. In an ironic sense, when they said that premiums would go up regardless of what happened in the bill, you know they put that out a couple of weeks ago, it helped the public option, it didn't hurt it.... Certainly people said if premiums are going up, we need some strong medicine to keep them down, and the public option is one of the best medicines for that. So to speak.
Finally I asked what activists and bloggers need to do to help keep the ball rolling towards reform. Essentially, we have to do what we've been doing until now, he said. "There's going to be a lot of misinformation put out there by Republicans, by right-wing talk radio, by some of the industry groups and keeping people's eye on the ball and what we're really doing here and how much better it will make healthcare for America is key. Shutting down those lies and untruths and misinformation as soon as they come up instead of just being complacent and saying 'they're not true, we don't have to answer them.'"