July 6, 2006:
What I'm saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for you and your families to get something done to make health care affordable, to get universal health insurance.
October 23, 2006:
I've been working on health insurance reform for more than a dozen years. ... I have offered a comprehensive program. Small business health insurance reform, plus something I call MediKids to cover all the children in America on a sliding fee basis up until the age of 25.
MediChoice to allow anybody in our country to buy into a national insurance pool like the health insurance pool that we federal employees and Members of Congress have. Medical malpractice reform.
It will cover 95% of those who are not covered now, and it will reduce the pressure on rising costs for all the millions of others.
Flash forward to the present, and Joe Lieberman is now saying he'll break his pledge and say "no" the public option. Lieberman could always reverse course and honor his pledge, but if he doesn't, it makes a mockery of all the Democrats who fought to keep him inside the Democratic caucus last December.
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Update (3:37PM) by Jed: Members of Congress have more options than typical federal employees. Unlike most federal employees, Members of Congress can buy pay for health services from the Attending Physician of the U.S. Congress, receiving services under a publicly administered plan.
Keeping that in mind, during the debate, Lieberman said that his plan would offer the same choices that Members of Congress have -- but when he announced the plan during the 2003 campaign, it was focused on private plans only. WaPo (9/3/03, via Nexis):
Modeled after the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, Lieberman's MediKids and MediChoice would offer guaranteed, comprehensive coverage through large, low-cost purchasing pools. To keep the cost down, Lieberman would cap insurer profits at 2 percent, as the federal program does now.
By invoking the spectrum of options available to Members of Congress, Lieberman may have overstated the true breadth of his plan. But anyone listening to that debate -- and basing their vote on it -- heard Joe Lieberman say he supported giving everybody access to the same sorts of plans available to Congress. And thus far, he's fallen short of that standard.