Clyburn added: “We want a public option to do basically three things: Create more choice for insurers, create more competition for insurance companies, and to contain costs. So if we can come up with a process by which these three things can be done, then I’m all for it. Whether or not we label it a public option or not is of no consequence.’’
Clyburn was interviewed on CBS’s “Face the Nation’’ and CNN’s “State of the Union.’’
Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said the public option is not dead but added that he recognizes the realities in the Senate, where Democrats had to scrape up every vote from their side even to pass a bill without a government plan to compete in the private insurance marketplace.
“Before the House was to give up the public option, we would want to be persuaded that there are other mechanisms in whatever bill comes out that will keep down premiums,’’ Van Hollen said on “Fox News Sunday.’’ He appeared to sketch out a bottom line without a government plan necessarily included, saying, “We’ve got to make sure that the final product is affordable.’’
Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, underscored the divisions Democrats will have to bridge when negotiators from the House and Senate meet next month to reconcile the two bills. He said there will need to be more give on the House side than the Senate, which took weeks to find the 60 votes needed for passage.
“If we are going to have a final law, it will look a lot more like the Senate version than the House version,’’ Menendez asserted on the Fox program.
The Senate’s Christmas Eve achievement brought the nation closer than it has been for generations to a new order in health insurance, one that would eventually require nearly all Americans to get coverage, help many pay for it, and restrict onerous insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with preexisting sickness.
