With nearly 56 Senators supporting a public option, O’Donnell makes ridiculous suggestion

Why Reid Shouldn’t Include The Public Option In The Merged Senate Bill

Lawrence O’Donnell — who served as Senate Finance Committee staff director during the debate over President Clinton’s failed health care reforms — tells Politico’s Live Pulse that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) shouldn’t merge the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill with the HELP Committee’s far more progressive alternative. Sen. George Mitchell tried that in 1994 and Republicans went line-by-line successfully defeating the bill:


The most controversial element of this health care reform fight is, of course, the public option and Reid has flip-flopped on his willingness to include the provision in the merged Senate legislation. On Thursday, Reid promised, “We are going to have a public option before this bill goes to the President’s desk,” suggesting that the bill will move to the floor of the Senate with the public plan. Meanwhile, “senior administration officials have been holding private meetings almost daily at the Capitol with senior Democratic staff to discuss ways to include a version of the public plan in the healthcare bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring to the Senate floor this month.”

But is O’Donnell right? Does it make more sense to exclude the public plan from the Senate bill and add it during Conference? I think it does. The public plan has become a political wedge issue. Republicans have stacked their entire opposition to reform on the public plan, effectively shutting out any meaningful discussion about affordability or insurance regulations.

Excluding the public option from the Senate bill could broaden the health care debate. Republicans will complain that they need assurances that a public option won’t be added in during conference. They’ll spend more energy questioning the constitutionality of the individual mandate, the wisdom of eliminating the overpayments to private insurers participating in Medicare Advantage, rationing abortions to women, and ensuring that legal immigrants don’t have access to care.

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The puglican approach will be to whittle out individual aspects that are, taken by themselves, unpopular.

If they plan to do that then O'Donnell is making sense. If that is the plan then there is no point having the Senate spend a month rejecting PO in a 60 vote environment. That could only hurt.

So in the scenario where PO is most viable a Senate floor fight on PO probably isn't helpful. Unless someone has 60 votes.