A good week for the public option

Several bits of good news for the public option this week. Activists across the country deserve a good deal of credit for making sure the public option has remained at the forefront of the debate on health care reform.

Here are the highlights:

• The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the Senate HELP Committee's draft legislation which includes a public option will cost $611 billion over ten years.
  
  

  The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. [...]
  
  The [employer mandate] provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals

• On Thursday, North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan threw her support behind the public option. Hagan who defeated Elizabeth Dole in 2008 with strong progressive support but had also taken a lot of contributions from the health insurance industry had been a hold-out on the HELP committee. But in the face of a strong campaign by North Carolina progressives, MoveOn.org, FireDogLake's Public Option Whip Project and others, Hagan has seen the light, endorsed the public option and voted with the rest of the Democrats on the HELP committee to move their legislation forward. This is an case where principled activism made an important difference.
  
  
  • Rangers you should consider signing the North Carolina Breast Cancer Survivors petition to Senator Hagan.
  
  
  • Also consider making a call a day using the Public Whip Tool at FireDogLake. You can read more about their effort in this diary at DailyKos by nyceve (a.k.a. Eve Gittelson) who has been advocating for health care reform there for many years.


• If you read Eve's diary linked above, you'll know that Rep. Jerold Nadler, D-NY, who represents Eve in what is arguably the most liberal district in the country (Manhattan's Upper West Side) has gotten off the fence and declared his committment to not vote for health care reform legislation that does not include a strong public option.


• At a health care town hall meeting in Virginia on Thursday, President Obama continued to voice support for the public option:

  I also strongly believe that one of the options in the exchange should be a public option, in order for us to create some competition for the private insurers to keep them honest. If they are in fact giving good service and providing high-quality coverage, then that's where people will want to go. But there should be a benchmark there of a public plan, non-for-profit plan, that keeps administrative costs low and is focused on providing good service. And that way you can make the decision which deal is going to be better for you and your family.

• The White House also released a statement supporting the HELP bill.


• Is Wal-Mart really joining in the fight for meaningful health care reform? Ezra thinks so.

Good news is very welcome, but we still have a long way to go to achieve our goal of authentic health care reform that is responsive to the needs of the all Americans.