( FromTWD)
Sam Stein reports an interesting development. After 9 Democratic senators banded together for a public option push, Diane Feinstein has become the 10th:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) became the 10th Senator to sign on to a new effort by Democrats to press Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to pass a public option for insurance coverage using reconciliation, her office confirmed to the Huffington Post on Wednesday.
The California Democrat joins a list of mostly progressive members to offer her late-stage support for the government run plan. In a letter to Reid on Tuesday a quartet of Democrats penned urged Reid to pass the proposal through parliamentary procedures that allow a simple up-or-down vote.
And Stein notes, Feinstein hasn't been out in public urging that we get a public option before. This is a startling surprise of pleasant indeed:
In putting her name among the signatories Feinstein expands the pool of senators pushing for a public plan beyond the progressive wing and those lawmakers facing primary challenges in the 2010 midterm elections. The California Democrat has been a supporter of the proposal from the start, though not a particularly vocal one. The recent news that the largest insurer in her home state, Anthem Blue Cross, was raising premiums on its customers by as much as 39 percent played a role in her decision.
"I can think of no better example of why we need health insurance reform," she said of the rate-hike news, "and this kind of behavior is a stark reminder of why any reform plan should establish a rate authority to keep insurance rates affordable."
Now what type of public option these Senators want is a completely whole different story now.
It is a major shock for my mind that those words are even being mentioned by any Senator like this publicly with how everything has transpired so far. But the political pressure of this moment could somehow be too much to just do even "middle of the road" reform and actually do more?
The fact that a Senator like Feinstein has come out and join this pledge (albeit after 9 Senators have done so) should not be discounted as just some other news right now.
Could it be meaningless later? Maybe. But why would Feinstein with her perch of not being the most progressive figure as we all know now come out with this much candor for what is suppose to be a far abandon product of this long onerous debate?
Maybe it was what her state's insurance companies were doing that made her say "Enough was enough" for her to say what she has said today? Who knows?
Either way, she has come out on record to join this growing list that has totally come out of the blue.
There I say, has the public option out of nowhere had its most unexpected and dramatic Lazarus moment to date?
(From TWD, short diary because of a lot of things going on, Goodnight all).
Update: From Turkana's diary, I try to see if Roland Burris did become the 10th Senator before, but I can't find anything confirming that. And Stein didn't include him on the list of those that have signed on to this push.
Update 2: Okay, cool, got confirmation from MRA NY on Burris, as McJoan just front paged it over there. Now it's 11 Senators.