Pelosi accepts defeat on robust public option

In what had already been shaping up as a bad week for the public insurance option, things just got decidedly worse.

The Hill is reporting that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will announce tomorrow that she does not have the votes to pass a health care bill with a robust public option and will go with the version proposed by the Congressional Blue Dog conservatives.

The public option proposed by House conservative Democrats – and agreed to in the compromise bill presented by the Energy & Commerce Committee – requires the administrators of a government health insurer to negotiate rates individually with hospitals and doctors rather than presetting payments at Medicare rates (the ‘robust’ option) or Medicare rates plus 5%.

While Speaker Pelosi has been steadfast in her commitment to producing a bill with the more liberal public insurance plan, the vote count leaking out of a meeting of House liberals today revealed that there are 47 Democrats against the robust option or Medicare plus 5% options with 8 more leaning towards no, leaving Pelosi short of the 218 votes she needs to get it done.

While many Congressional progressives, who had previously threatened to vote against any bill that did not include the public option based on Medicare rates, were staying silent, the co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), commented -

I am not rolling over. I will insist on a Medicare-plus-5 [percent] amendment on the floor so that the full caucus can vote on it. We are hopeful that the Rules Committee will allow this amendment, which has tremendous public support, to be voted on for the record.
Via The Hill

But Grijalva’s fellow co-chairwoman, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), was a bit more temperate in her response to the development.

When we see what the bill says, we’ll decide if we can support it. This isn’t walk-away time.

The public insurance plan that will now be included in the House bill is estimated to cost $85 billion more than the version based on Medicare rates and represents a significant setback for Speaker Pelosi who has continuously promised that she had the votes for the public option she wanted.