http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0909/06/sotu.04.htmlSTATE OF THE UNION WITH JOHN KING
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Big speech from the president Wednesday night, a divide in the Democratic Party about whether you have the votes for the public option, whether it's time for the president to say, sorry, we don't have the votes, let's move on. What do you want the president to say?
ELLISON: Or the opposite, John. He could say, you know what, the public option is essential to reform. He could say that a public option is the only thing that's going to hold insurance premiums down as we've seen them double over the last ten years. He could say that a public option with a large provider network is going to help promote better medical practices based on evidence.
So I'm hoping that he understands the essentiality of the public option. A number of us were with on a conference call with him earlier in the week telling him we really do need that public option. And he said he preferred a public option. So we're trying to give him the political backing he needs to get what he prefers, which I think is the right thing.
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KING: Could you support that, give the insurance companies a chance but have hanging over them the prospect of two, three, four years down the road the public option would then kick in with a trigger? Or is that a copout?
ELLISON: They had 60 years of a chance and we've seen doubling premiums for the 85 percent of Americans who already have employer- based health care. Now it's time for a public option that can really help. Here's the thing. We have monopolized and oligopolized markets in nearly every major metropolitan area with regard to insurance.
How are we going to drive them down? Why do you charge us more? Because they can. How are we going to get them down? By introducing three things, competition, choice, and a competitive price. I don't know how any conservative can be against those three things. KING: Who about the co-op approach? You have them here in Minnesota. We visited one in Wisconsin. Some people say that deals with access and affordability, put some competition in the marketplace, but with less government. Is that a public option?
ELLISON: Well, government is a good thing. I mean, government got me to the fair today. I drove on a government road. I went to University of Minnesota, which is a public school. I mean, you know, come on, government does good for us. Let's stop this ideological commitment to bashing government. The fact is look, a co-op will not give us the strength of a large provider network that we need from the very beginning. If we have a weak little provider network, it is not going to work out.
Minnesota has been building on its co-op for literally decades and so if we're going to have something that is going to be competitive from the beginning, we need a public option and I'd like to see the president fight for it. We can get it through the House and remember, budget reconciliation requires that the Senate only needs 51 percent. So I'm hope that the president will look at that as a viable option too.
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KING: What if the president said, I need this? I know you don't like it. I know it's not enough but I need this. Politically I cannot afford to pass a health care bill, don't walk away?
ELLISON: I would say he needs to go talk to those people who won't compromise with him and insist there be no public option. He can talk to them as well as he can talk to us. I think that why should the progressives, why should the liberals always cave? The fact is those folks who are getting all kinds of campaign donations, and getting lobbied to the tune of $1.4 million a day by the insurance industry, why don't they compromise a little bit?
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