Olympia Snow told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC an hour or so ago that there will not be a public option in the Senate Bill.
I am adding details as I can (I was was encouraged to write this diary after I commented this in a diary) so please excuse the short diary for now.
Source: Crooks & Liars
Olympia Snowe reverses herself on co ops and admits public option not on the table in Senate Finance Committee
By John Amato Friday Aug 21, 2009 11:03am
Olympia Snowe admitted to Andrea Mitchell that the Senate Finance Committee is not even considering a public option in their bill and never had it on the table. She said that the skyrocketing costs of health care are paramount to their bill which is why they are ogling co opts.
Mitchell: So bottom lines, Nancy Pelosi says that they will not produce anything that does not include a public option. Do you see any way that the gang of six will come out of the Finance Committee with a public option?
Snowe: No, I don't. We have not had the public option on the table. It's been co ops and addressing affordability and availability and plans through the exchange and those are the challenges we're wrestling with to insure that there are basic plans to offer Americans.
Source (via Democratic Underground) includes a video of Snowe saying, in June, that co-ops were useless.
I did see this on MSNBC myself and frantically searched for any quotes online, so I like to credit DU. I was multitasking while this was on tv. It was one of those "did she say what I just think she said?"
UPDATE:
Slinkerwink has this quote in the comments:
White House Praises Snowe
"Well, that's democracy, isn't it?" Burton said. "You've got folks who come from all different spectrums who are trying to get something done and we appreciate that Senator Snowe has been such a leader on health care and has been working hard to find a bipartisan solution to get healthcare reform done. We're going to continue to work with her and Republicans in the Senate and Democrats and House Democrats and Republicans and try to make some progress here.
"Look, on the public option, the President has said over and over again that his goal here is to offer some more choices to bring costs down and to have more competition," Burton added. "The best way to do that he thinks is through the public option. If there's a better idea, he's certainly willing to listen to it. But you know we're still talking with folks on both sides of the aisle."
When will people get that President Obama has said that he prefers a bipartisan bill, and that's why he's working with the Senate Finance Committee? That's why we're worried that the Senate Finance bill, which will be bipartisan, will end up in the final conference report with co-ops and no public option.
UPDATE 2:
Huffington Post:
Snowe met Tuesday with business representatives and lobbyists from her state and said that the Finance Committees plan would not include a public option, according to a meeting participant who took notes and passed them on to the Huffington Post.
The committee bill, she told the group, was being scrubbed of controversial items.
The heart of the Finance Committee's bill, Snowe said, is regulation that would force health insurers to offer, at an affordable price, a minimum standard of coverage -- a so-called "bronze" plan.
I thought this might be going on- the insurance companies could be promising to offer affordable plans if there isn't a public option.