How Reid Found His Silver Bullet: Opt-Out Pitched Just Three Weeks Ago
Two months ago, the public option for insurance coverage was being read its last rites. On Monday, it was alive and well after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that he would include the provision as part of a broader health care bill.
The announcement was a dramatic triumph for the progressive community, which had howled and hissed for months as the prospects for a government-run plan dimmed. But the story behind Reid's decision has more to do with backroom negotiations behind a hastily proposed idea than with a change in political temperament.
The compromise proposal that turned out to be the senator's solution for the public option impasse -- allowing states to opt-out of the system -- first came to his attention only three weeks ago, an aide confirmed.
In the weeks after the Congress came back from the August recess it was clear that reform in general -- and the public option in particular -- had lost inertia as a result of systematic attacks from boisterous town-halls protesters. In the Senate, the prospects of corralling the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster seemed out of reach.
Democrats began kibitzing with each other to find a solution. Conservatives in the party were not on board a public plan, but liberals were equally sour on a bill without one. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle had proposed allowing state governments to set up their own government-run systems back in June. But that too had been ridiculed among progressives.
Around the time that the Senate Finance Committee was slated to vote on (and ultimately reject) two variations of a national public option, two of its members -- Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) -- began informal talks about how to bridge the divide within the caucus.
Carper went first. The Delaware Democrat proposed a variation of Daschle's state-run entity -- in which states would instead be able to opt in to a national public plan.
"It caught on," said one Democratic Senate aide who was privy to the early conversations. "[Carper] started talking about it with other moderates. It seemed inoffensive. [Schumer] recognized it had potential with the moderates and tried to meet them halfway in terms of the having a state option."
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