Poor Poor Pitiful Harry

Pelosi Prepares To Move Ahead With Robust Public Option

by Brian Beutler last night at TPM, October 20, 2009, 8:09PM

A preliminary analysis from CBO may have sealed the deal. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is preparing to move ahead with a “robust” public option–one that reimburses hospitals and providers at Medicare rates, plus five percent–in the House’s health care bill. She is briefing her caucus about the plan’s savings tonight, and, pending the approval of a sufficient majority of members, will adopt the measure as part of the complete reform package.

The analysis finds the reconstituted House proposal to be deficit neutral, and require less than $900 billion in new spending, over ten years.

The bill remains nominally more expensive than the Senate Finance Committee proposal, but would cover 96 percent of all Americans, providing greater bang for each federal dollar spent. And, aides note, the bill that comes to the floor of the Senate will be a hybrid of the Finance and more expensive HELP Committee bills, so the price is expected to rise.

The move is sure to make progressives ecstatic, and puts Senate leaders, who have been unable to reach any decisions about their preferences for a public option in their own bill, in an uncomfortable position.

Read the whole thing at TPM…

Something The Dog Said has also started a petition, working with FireDogLake, to primary any democrat who votes against a public option…

Make It Clear, No Vote For Public Option, Face A Primary

We must make it clear to all Democrats that this is the issue which they can not ignore us over. Many on the Left have said they are done with the Democratic Party if it fails to come through on this critical issue. Usually the Dog is one to caution this is not a good way of persuading policy makers, this is still true today, but he does have an idea which combines this commitment with an action all incumbents will pay attention to.

Starting today the Dog is running a petition for those who believe this issue is too important to let slide. The petition says in part, “We the undersigned commit to supporting with our time, money and votes a primary challenger to any Democratic lawmaker who votes against a robust public option.” We have worked to hard to create a large Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress to allow condone its failure on one of the most critical issues of public policy of our time.

The petition is going to run for the next three weeks. You can find it at this link. If you are serious about health care reform, if you are tired of feeling like the money is trumping the will of the people, if you believe we have to have accountability from our lawmakers, then please, go, sign the petition and tell all your friends to do the same. Knowing there are thousands and thousands of Democratic voters who will make re-election hard for incumbents who fail to represent their Party is one of the best ways to get the attention of lawmakers.

Over the next three weeks the Dog will update you on how many signatures we have gathered and how we will be delivering them to the Congress.

Read Dog’s whole post here…