Reid Press Conference Soon on Next Steps for Senate Bill
Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is set to announce something health care-related at around 3:15 p.m. today. We’re going to watch on C-SPAN and will update this page soon with information and reaction (if what he says is newsworthy).
Update: Watch it live here.
Update 3:30: Well, that was fast. The Senate bill that will be sent to the Congressional Budget Office to be “scored” (to find out how much it will cost and/or reduce the deficit) will have a public option with a state opt-out. A “trigger” proposal, which some said would have set the public option in motion only at some point in the future if private health insurance costs did not come down, may actually now be completely dead. Reid said it won’t be in his bill nor would it be considered on the floor.
He said something about 2014 as the year states would be allowed to opt out, but it was really hard to tell what he meant. Many say it will take years just to get the public option ramped up.
Oddly enough, he also said the bill would have the Senate Finance Committee’s member-run health care cooperatives provision — once floated as an alternative to the public option — but it remains to be seen how that would work vis-a-vis the opt-out public option.
Lots of details to be worked out, for sure, but it’s pretty amazing that the public option lives on. Maybe they do listen to the public after all!