{"id":448135,"date":"2010-03-19T15:43:03","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T19:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=79800"},"modified":"2010-03-19T15:43:03","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T19:43:03","slug":"a-strange-call-from-reid-to-vote-on-the-public-option-%e2%80%a6-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/448135","title":{"rendered":"A Strange Call From Reid to Vote on the Public Option \u2026 Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

What began<\/a> as one of the most controversial issues of the months-long health care debate continues to be so: The public option — a government-backed insurance plan designed to compete with private companies — wasn’t included as part of the Democrats’ reconciliation bill, sending some liberals<\/a> through the roof.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) attempted to appease some of the chamber’s most ardent public option supporters, vowing to hold a separate vote on the issue later this year, the Huffington Post reported<\/a> today. In a letter to Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Reid said he was “very disappointed” that the Democrats didn’t have the votes to keep the provision as part of the reform bills.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I remain committed to pursuing the public option,” Reid wrote.<\/p>\n

\n

While I believe that the legislation we are considering does much to provide affordable coverage to millions of Americans and curb insurance company abuses, I also believe that the public option would provide additional competition to make insurance even more affordable. As we have discussed, I will work to ensure that we are able to vote on the public option in the coming months.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Unmentioned, of course, is the tiny inconvenience that, if Democrats didn’t have the votes to pass the public option by reconciliation (which requires just a simple majority), they certainly won’t have the votes to pass it later in the year, when the filibuster will be back requiring 60 votes to pass anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What began as one of the most controversial issues of the months-long health care debate continues to be so: The public option — a government-backed insurance plan designed to compete with private companies — wasn’t included as part of the Democrats’ reconciliation bill, sending some liberals through the roof. Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-448135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}