(La Times) House Democrats unveil healthcare bill (says Senate backs away from public option)

[Political Heretic]

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-healthcare20-2009jun20,0,770495.story

House Democrats unveil healthcare bill
The proposal includes a divisive government insurance option, among other reforms.
By Noam N. Levey
9:34 PM PDT, June 19, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- Senior House Democrats on Friday introduced their plan for reshaping the nation's healthcare system, calling for a new government insurance option, a new mandate on employers to provide coverage and a new guarantee of subsidized healthcare for the poor.

...

The blueprint drew swift praise from President Obama. "This proposal would improve the affordability, availability and quality of healthcare and represents a major step toward . . . our goal of fixing what is broken about healthcare while building on what works," he said in a statement.

...

On the other side of the Capitol, some senior Senate Democrats had already begun backing away from the so-called government option, seeing it as an obstacle in terms of cost and building bipartisan support.

When Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) recently introduced their version of healthcare reform, they did not include the government-option provision.

It's clear that the Senate is where the real danger of failure lies. It is unfortunate that the House appears to be moving toward passing a bill that is okay, but the absolute bare minimum we could accept and still call it "reform" in the people's interest. That means that the Senate will attempt to water it down beyond the point of acceptability.

I can't believe that Kennedy got behind something that not only didn't include a strong public option, but didn't include any public option. That is seriously depressing.

See related threads:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6082339&mesg_id=6082339

[FrenchieCat]

1. WTF is this "a divisive government insurance option" in the headline about?

Is that what the author of the piece is labeling the public option? divisive?
Guess he's decided to "help" out as much as he can, under the circumstances! :Shrug:

[Birthmark]

4. Well, it is divisive

It is divisive to those who accept bribes...I'm sorry, contributions...from the companies that make fortunes off the sick and injured.

To the rest of us, it's the absolute minimum necessary to begin addressing the real problems.

[FrenchieCat]

6. Yeah....but of course, my real point was that this "journalist" isn't writing his headline for

the health care industry; or he shouldn't be. His audience is supposed to be readers of his newspaper, i.e., the public.

[Birthmark]

8. That's so sweet!

But I know what you mean.

[rockymountaindem]

2. Every time I think we're winning, two days later people start "backing away"

from the things we want. I've been pessimistic, but it's getting even uglier up there. Face it: plenty of Senators in our own party have absolutely no interest in giving us real reform.

[Autumn]

3. Thats the killer

those Senators are OURS and they consider our needs to be a burden.

[blindpig]

5. Ya ever play 'three card monte?

It's a set up from the git go.

[tritsofme]

7. This article is a month old.

We hadn't heard from HELP at that point.

[Political Heretic]

9. Apologies - I didn't realize this when I posted it. Has Kennedy changed since then?

Again, I'm sorry, I was browsing my igoogle RSS feeds this morning, and mistakenly thought this was current.

[Wednesdays]

10. K&R

:kick: