PUBLIC OPTION SET BACK - AT 6:50 P.M. ET:  The so-called "public option," creating, in effect, a government health-insurance program, suffered a serious setback in a Senate committee today:

WASHINGTON — After a half-day of animated debate, the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected efforts by liberal Democrats to add a government-run health insurance plan to major health care legislation, dealing the first official setback to an idea that many Democrats, including President Obama, say they support.

All of the other versions of the health care legislation advancing in Congress — a bill approved by the Senate health committee and a trio of bills in the House — include some version of the government-run plan, or public option.

But the Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, long ago removed it from his proposal because of stiff opposition from Republicans who call the public plan a step toward “socialized medicine.”

COMMENT:  This does not kill the public option idea, but it sets it back.  A House bill will almost certainly contain a public option, and will have to be reconciled with a Senate bill. 

A word of caution:  Killing the public option, if that happens, does not mean that Americans love insurance companies.  I went to a talk by pollster Frank Luntz (a conservative) today, and he stressed that point in discussing polling results on health care.  Insurance companies are disliked, and conservatives must proceed with care, politically, by providing a health-care alternative of their own, not simply embracing "private" companies. 

September 29, 2009