Durbin: Progressives Forced Our Hand On Public Option

Democratic leaders were forced to include a national public health insurance option as part of health care reform by progressive Democratic senators who refused to support anything less, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on Monday.

Durbin's assessment was made to a handful of reporters following the announcement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that after weeks of talks with his colleagues he had determined that including a public option that states could opt out of was the best way to go.

For many years, it's been centrist and conservative-leaning senators who have been scoring legislative victories by digging in their heels, so this represented a quite dramatic turnabout. It is difficult to remember the last time that progressives won a legislative victory by laying down firm demands and sticking to them. In the House, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has found its feet, too, and is locked in a final battle with conservative Democrats over the shape of a public option.

At the end of last week, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, the lone Republican that Democrats are still trying to woo, said that she couldn't support a bill that had a public option with an opt-out provision. Snowe preferred a public option that would be "triggered" into being by a failure by the insurance industry to meet certain benchmarks.

But Reid and the leadership faced this basic math: There is only one Snowe and there are 60 members of the Democratic caucus. If just a few Democrats abandoned the bill, it would fall short even with Snowe's support.

"It's a zero-sum situation," said Durbin, who is in charge of counting votes in the Senate. "If we thought that just putting the trigger in meant that we'd end with 61 votes," he explained, then that's what leadership would have done.

"But there were some [senators] that felt that that just didn't go far enough moving toward a public option," said Durbin, who is himself a backer.

"We have 60 people in the caucus," Reid said. "We'll all hang together and see where we come out."

Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) had insisted he would oppose any bill without a public option and rejected the trigger as a compromise. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and self-described democratic socialist who caucuses with Democrats, had come close to making such a threat but said he was "playing it day to day." Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) said over the weekend that the lack of a public option was a "good reason" to vote against it.

Durbin said that he is confident the progressive wing in the Senate is satisfied with the opt-out compromise.

Snowe called Reid's decision "deeply disappointing", but the majority leader said he still hopes to win her support for the overall package.

"I spoke to Olympia on Friday. I've talked to her on a number of occasions. And at this stage she does not like a public option of any kind. And so we'll have to move forward on this, and there [will] come a time, I hope, where she sees the wisdom of supporting a health care bill after having had an opportunity, her and others, to offer amendments," said Reid. "We hope that Olympia will come back. She's worked hard. She's a very good legislator. I'm disappointed that the one issue, the public option, has been something that's frightened her."

Comments

[cruisepuppy7452a]

Oy, where do I begin with Harry Reid? The man who would be queen. The public isn't going to accept this or any proposal that does not provide single payer. They need to get a clue. You cannot force anyone that is already living below the poverty line to be forced to buy healthcare they cannot afford. You cannot force the public to go with a plan that is n better that what is out there now, and still refuses to cover millions of us. What part of they need to go back to the drawing board and get it right, don't they understand? The elderly won't be bullied or frightened anymore, they are hip to what is going on. The rest of us are just as hip and mad as hell this is even continuing. We did not vote Obama in to have more of the same or worse. We had enough of that. The public wants single payer, we want our jobs and homes back, we are tired of the BS and games both sides are playing with our lives. Screw this damn war, end it already, use the money for the American people and do your damn jobs. How hard is that really?

[tran23]

They may have been forced to include a public option, but that hasn't stopped them from watering it down to the point of uselessness.

[dtlewis]

"said Reid: ["We hope that Olympia will come back. She's worked hard. She's a very good legislator. I'm disappointed that the one issue, the public option, has been something that's frightened her."] "

Senator Durbin, states he is for the public option but frames his position as having been "forced" by the progressive wing. Well, now we know where Sen. Durbin stands now don't we? As for Sen. Reid, he states he's "disappointed" that Sen. Snowe is opposed to the public option.

Sen. Reid take note: the public option is the absolute minimum the vast majority of well informed citizens are going to accept...p­eriod! Tell the American people precisely where you stand and why you hold that position or shut your mouth and get out of Public Service. Stuff the politics!

You sell us down the river on Universal Single Payer and now you think the American public is going let you get away with bending us over again on the public option? Guess again. Sure, try backing us into a corner and see just how well that works out for you. Ticked off? Angry? More accurately, livid and growing ever more militant with every asinine move you duplicitous parasites make. Do what you were elected to do and get it over with. I don't care if you are re-elected or not. Elected office was never intended to be a career path. Do your PUBLIC SERVICE and move on.

[ReedYoung]

Suddenly, President Obama's repetition that the public option is only one part of comprehensive health care reform looks much more progressive.

"We hope that Olympia will come back. She's worked hard. She's a very good legislator. I'm disappointed that the one issue, the public option, has been something that's frightened her."

Let's all take pity on the fraidy-cat Republicans who are frightened of da widdle public option. On second thought, let's point and laugh at them for trying to scare literate voters that a public OPTION could ever be a takeover of anything.

[inrealtime]

It wasn't the progressives alone that elected these clowns. They all including Obama need Independents and moderates to win, and those voters are running away from them and their policies in droves. Check the polls and it hasn't even passed yet with the 5 years of related fees, mandates, and taxes before it even gets started

[ReedYoung]

Well over half of Americans, including independents and "moderates" want a public option for health care, and none of the polls that have come up with those data have asked if they want it to be "triggered" by the health care system getting so much worse that even more than 44,789 people die every year because of lack of health care. (Harvard) The point that progressives are winning on is that it's much more than bad enough already to declare the corporate, for-profit health "insurance" system a national emergency. If you waited for a hurricane to kill a quarter that number of people, or sent a tenth that many to die needlessly in a war on made-up nuclear weapons, you'd rightly be considered the worst President ever, by all sane people. How much worse will we rightly judge nominal "Democrats" who advocate anything less than universal health care immediately, for anybody who wants it, as Senator Wyden has proposed?

[GoldStarMom]

The military forces of the U.S.A., along with the VA, our federal employees -- including both houses of congress -- not to mention (to some extent) those receiving medicare ALL have single payer health coverage. We SHOULD be telling Congress & the DOD that if it's not "socialism" for THEM to have it, it's not socialism for ALL CITZENS to have it. If we don't have it, neither should they.

A few other changes I'd like to see:

A flat percentage based income tax for everyone, no exemptions, no deductions, no loopholes.

Corporations taxed & treated as a business, not as a citizen/person.

ALL Federal political campaigns financed from a fund drawn from our taxes and dispersed equally to all campaigns by the Federal government. No more corporate or lobbiest "contributions" or gifts.

[ReedYoung]

Wonderful, except maybe for the tax. It should remain progressive, but all deductions and exemptions should end, and be prohibited by Constitutional Amendment. I'm not even sure that's what you meant, but "flat" tax is often code for taxing the poor, who by definition have no "disposable" income, at the same rate as the rich, and as Thom Hartmann explains, that is destabilizing to the general economy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/the-great-tax-con-job_b_242065.html

I'd argue that it's even bad for the rich, except for the most manipulative influence-peddlers who knowingly wreck the economy with de-regulations like Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the Credit Futures Modernization Act, which allow them to accrue huge sums, but also undermine production as the basis of wealth and income. Everybody but criminals is better off with a progressive tax with no exemptions.

[CommunistUtopia]

The government option of health care may be in trouble, anyway. McDonnell should be Creigh Deeds in Virginia. If Corzine loses Chris Christie in New Jersey then watch out. The Moderate Democrats will be running from this. Further, if Hoffman wins in New York 23, any Democrat politician in a swing state or district is going to run away from this as fast as they can.

[ReedYoung]

I think too many moderates are at least vaguely aware of the rampant corruption in New Jersey to take any cues from that cesspool, so your concern is unfounded.

[CommunistUtopia]

Not true. New Jersey has been a blue state for a while and it goes to Christie, you watch, Blue Dogs, will be terrified and not want to tie their careers to this White House.

[kassandrasduplex]

If genuine PROGRESSIVES had had anything to do with the final "reform" bill it would include STATE'S OPT IN FOR SINGLE PAYER HEALTH, not an "opt out" for a government run HMO to compete with all the other HMOs.
NO MORE HMOs. WE'VE HAD ENOUGH HMOs.

[ReedYoung]

Progressives had SOMETHING to do with it, just not enough. So elect more next year to improve the existing health care bill. Unfortunately, much of it isn't even scheduled to begin to take effect until President Obama's second term.

[SonnyDaze]

I watched military healthcare grow steadily worse over the years. When I started we received yearly physicals with EKGs and you got see a couple of doctors during the day. Now we get physicals every 5 years no EKGs or other machines with a PA instead of a doctor. If the costs go up the level of care goes down given the reality that you can only devote so much money to healthcare. Is this public option really worth it? This bill should be scrapped. We should bring down costs by limiting torts reforms and forcing young people (including illegals) to get healthcare first. Once you have a bigger healtier pool you can enact more legislation. Right now we're just going to throw money down a whole and make healthcare worse. What will you say when you find out that you can only get a physical every 5 years?

[Acharn]

Tort reform won't help. At worst, malpractice claims only account for 2% of health care costs. Most malpractice claims get denied anyway. The soaring cost of malpractice insurance premiums has nothing to do with the malpractice suit awards and everything to do with the insurance companies paying their CEO's millions a year.

I can't speak to current military medical care -- I retired over 25 years ago, when it was excellent. But I do remember one military physician saying to me, "You want to see socialized medicine? This is it." I thought that was pretty weird, because I was getting great care.

The several bills being considered all will bring young and healthy payers into the system. Without a rubust public option, all their premiums will just go to increase insurance companies' profits; you don't think the insurance companies will actually reduce premiums, do you?

[ReedYoung]

Corporate health "insurance" provides well-documented perverse incentives to order unnecessary high-revenue scans and drugs even when less expensive diagnostic methods and treatments are likely to be MORE EFFECTIVE. A side effect of such over-treatment is that more people cannot afford any treatment at all.

Thank you for your service, but as medical care is concerned, you should consider yourself lucky to have any access at all to medical care.

[TJCole]

The little bit we are getting is all due to progressives pushing , not the Obamacrats that hang on every word and buy into every line of cheap rhetoric..­.

Still progressive have never had less voice than under Obama or exposure in the Media....i­t's all so right wing and conservati­ve...

The one thing Progressives have all figured out is you can't trust Obama...yo­u have to push him all the time on everything, if he thinks he can get away with it, he'll do it...let things die or just fade away, the status quo comes first ofr him...

[gawd]

Absolutely!

[kassandrasduplex]

"Public Option" isn't progressive. Expansion of single payer Medicare Medicaid is. This is a sham.

[TJCole]

I agree it's a sham, but if Obama had his way and the rest of the jackals and hyenas we wouldn't even be getting this crumb when it falls from the table...

Obama would only want it if it came easy, and was of no cost politically for him...

[TheShadow]

It's about time we found out that there some Democrats with the conviction, and fortitude to do the right thing.

Don't stop there guys and gals...

[kassandrasduplex]

Why don't you check out what genuine progressives really perfer (SINGLE PAYER ) as opposed to what a politician tells you about other politicians.

[lemonyashes]

Thank Goodness we are no longer beholden to Olympia Snowe and what she wants. I've said it time and time again the Blue Dogs lose if there is NO Healthcare Reform Bill passed. The Progressives lose if a BAD Healthcare Reform Bill is passed without a Public Option. Republicans lose in either case but can choose to be part of the historical passage of Healthcare Reform or be forgotten.

[metalcrafter]

Durbin's an idoit. Lets give to everyone that does not do anything for this country. There will always be rich people and poor people. Socialism does not work and healthcare in Canada and England sucks. They still come here. Control the costs and do not add 30 million people. Find the problem first and fix the it!! Don't throw money at it!!!!

[lemonyashes]

And how many Canadians or British have you talked to?

[biglimes]

Quit apologizing on behalf of rich insurance companies.

[GwenWare]

Stop kissing the insurance industry's petooi. They'd be just as happy to see you permanently gone and your family bankrupted.

[zest]

Snow is fast becoming a duck out of water; wouldn't be surprised if the didn't run again to spend more time with her family.

[Ldyandrea]

You know, in general I rather like Olympia Snowe, but in this case I can certainly live with her "disappointment". God knows there may be many who end up living because of it.

[GwenWare]

Hear, hear!