Not sure how I feel about this.
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Senate panel votes down public option for health care bill WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected two amendments to include a government-run public health insurance option in the only compromise health care bill so far.
Sen. Max Baucus said the public option provision would "hold back meaningful reform this year."
The amendments by Democratic Sens. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Charles Schumer of New York were opposed by all 10 Republicans on the committee and a few Democrats, including committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.
Baucus explained that he liked much about the idea of a public option but that he knew a health care bill containing the provision would fail to win enough support in the full Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster.
"I fear if this provision is in the bill, it will hold back meaningful reform this year," Baucus said.
Rockefeller said that unfair practices by insurance companies required a not-for-profit alternative that would give consumers a lower-cost option and, in some cases, the only coverage they could get.
"They're getting away with banditry. They revel in it," Rockefeller said of tactics by insurance companies to avoid covering high-cost or high-risk consumers.
"I feel so strongly about it because it makes so much sense," he said. "The people I represent need this, because they're helpless" in terms of health insurance.
However, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said a public option means the government eventually taking over the health care system.
"A government-run plan will ultimately force private insurers out of business," Grassley said, adding that the federal government would run the plan and run the market in which the plan compete.
"It will come to a single payer," he said of a government-run system for all. "That denies the American people choice."
Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey countered that such a characterization was "absurd, and everyone knows it."
"For patients, it will simply be one more choice," he said.
The Finance Committee is the last congressional panel to consider health care legislation before debate begins in the full House and Senate. Democratic proposals passed by another Senate committee and three House committees all include the public insurance option.
Full Story at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/29/senate.public.option/index.html
