Dick Durbin says the public option could be dropped on the Senate side of negotiations, but vaguely indicated that it could be picked up again in conference:
Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the chamber's foremost progressives, said that while he supported a government-run option for insurance, he was "open" to alternatives.
"Just understand that, after we pass this bill -- and I hope we do -- in the Senate, it will go to conference committee," said Durbin. "We'll have a chance to work out all of our differences."
"So we'll see how this ends, but I don't want the process to be filibustered to failure, which unfortunately, many senators are trying to do," Durbin added. "I want to make sure that we do something positive for the American people."
Working out "all the differences" will have to mean including the kind of public option that the House and the HELP committee included in their bills, and even strengthening it, as there are still some kinks (namely the timeline for implementing provisions) with the House bills.
What's increasingly frustrating is the extent to which the Baucus bill has become the default reform bill by all observers. There are four other committee chairs, not to mention plenty of Dem Senators who don't like what Baucus has been up to, including the Dems on the Finance Committee who have been shut out of the negotiations. Jay Rockefeller has been the most vocal, but other members of the committee are pushing for a strong public option as well, including Chuck Schumer:
On the "public option," Mr. Schumer said, "if you call it a co-op but it meets certain criteria — it’s available on Day 1, it’s available to everybody, it has the strength to go up against the big insurance companies and the big suppliers to bring down prices — fine.
"If it’s going to be a measly little thing that’s just a fig leaf, not fine," Mr. Schumer said. The rising din at constituent meetings makes it tougher for Senators Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, all Republicans, to embrace and explain even fig leaves.
And now, Sen. Maria Cantwell is on the record in support of a public option. Here's the transcript from her appearance on Bill Press's radio show.
BILL PRESS: So, do you support the public plan option? Yes or no?
SENATOR CANTWELL: Yes, I do. And I think that the HELP Committee did a good job of outlining it in their bill, and I think that we should try to get similar language in the Finance Committee... And we're going to be working with Senator Rockefeller and others to do that.
BILL PRESS: And uh, the Chairman, your Chairman [Max Baucus] has said... I saw again this morning... he says, basically, that um, Democrats ought to just forget about the public plan option.
SENATOR CANTWELL: Well, I disagree, in the sense that the public plan... if you think about what Medicare has been able to do, or you think about what, you know, competition really can do if we would have put the prescription drug benefit under Medicare, it would have driven down price. And the concentration of the insurance companies in these markets... and they have made... so while our, while individual wages may have gone up twenty four percent, healthcare costs, as I've said, have gone up a hundred and twenty percent over a ten year period of time. But insurance profits have gone up four hundred and twenty eight percent over that ten year period of time. So obviously, there's something going on here, where they're making a lot of money, and not driving down costs. And competition from a public option would help do that. And I think as we get into the heart of the debate, I think we can make this point, and I think we will be successful in picking up people who, who understand how important... Now, I talk to Republicans who don't want to cover people, who say, I do want to cover the uninsured, and the forty seven million people... I think when they look at this, they're going to see that having a public option is gonna be a very... the best way to provide competition.
Good news, if Cantwell, Schumer, and Rockefeller actually join together to buck Baucus and force him to bring the bill into the full committee. That could also mean challenging Durbin and Reid, who apparently have decided that Max Baucus speaks for the whole committee, if not the whole Senate.