Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been on a tear lately, promoting the public option in health care reform. And he's doing it again today. From Huff Post:
"This is where we are going to end up," he said of a health care overhaul that included a public plan. "And I think, it would be much better for the Senate Finance Committee if we did it in the committee... I think the Senate HELP committee compromised already, because you have a lot of members on the HELP committee who would've liked [the public option] to be much closer to Medicare. The idea seems to be catching everybody's imagination, and sense of fairness. And the only holdouts are sort of ideologues on the Republican side of this saying no government involvement whatsoever."I'm still very concerned that the Democrats are going to cave in the end, and that a lot of us won't see any benefit from the final plan (for example, as I've written before, I have virtually no prescription drug coverage under my stingy, and absurdly expensive (already $420 a month and going up 25% a year), Blue Cross self-employed plan - will the final plan fix things for people like me?). So this is good news that Schumer keeps pushing, but never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to sell you out at the last minute.
