Last night on Countdown, Rep. Chris Van Hollen told guest host Howard Dean that "we’ve got to have a public option in the plan that we send to the president’s desk."
DEAN: Chris, I know the House is doing a great job on this. But why haven’t we seen — why haven’t we seen Democrats in the Senate take a stronger bargaining position with the Republicans? Why give away something as fundamental as health care reform as the public option?
VAN HOLLEN: Well, you’re absolutely right, Howard. We’ve got to have a public option in the plan that we send to the president’s desk. We’re all still hoping that the Senate Finance Committee bill will have a public option.
If they don’t, we’re going to press hard. This has got to be in the bill that we send to the president’s desk. We’ve got to create more choice for consumers and more competition for the insurance companies.
I don’t think anyone was surprised to learn that the insurance companies are fighting this. These are the same companies that have seen their profits go through the roof over the last seven years. In fact, if you look at just the top 10 insurance companies, their profits have gone up about 430 percent over the last seven years, while everyone’s income stayed flat and while their premiums were going through the roof.
So, we’ve got to have a public option to create that competition and to give Americans more choice.
DEAN: Some Democrats are saying that there needs to be compromise on the public option in order to get the bill passed. But 72 percent of Americans say they want the choice of a public option. Does that mean that what the American people want is already dead in the Senate?
VAN HOLLEN: No. I certainly hope not. It’s certainly not dead with respect to the bill that we’ll send to the president’s desk.
The American people are exactly right. If you want more choice, you want to bring down premiums, you need that competition. There are parts of the country where the private insurance companies have huge monopoly lock over the markets. We need to provide that competition. As the president said, we need to start keeping these insurance companies honest.
You know you’re getting somewhere when you get a lot of resistance. And as you get closer to making this happen, you get more and more fight from the insurance companies, and we have to stick up for the consumers. And it’s pretty clear that the Republicans support the status quo, and there’s a good reason for that, which is their allies, the insurance industry, that has provided huge amounts of campaign contributions, supports the status quo, with respect to not providing for a public option.
Baucus and the Senate need to keep in mind that House leadership wants a public option, and don't particularly need to worry about being bipartisan. But what they do have to worry about are the Blue Dogs that enable the Republicans, and that's where Rep. Van Hollen comes in. Chris Van Hollen isn't in charge of the Senate, but he is in charge of something pretty critical, the DCCC. See the confluence, here? Far be it from me to tell Mr. Van Hollen how to distribute critical DCCC support in 2010, but it seems like it shouldn't be out of the question that support be tied to the most critical domestic policy effort their Democratic president and colleagues are fighting for.