public option

In the wake of a Congressional Budget Office report finding that current health reform legislation would cut the deficit by $138 billion in ten years, Colorado Fourth District U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey confirmed that she planned to vote to pass the legislation this weekend. State Rep. Cory Gardner, the GOP frontrunner seeking to unseat Markey in November, wasted no time blasting her for the decision.

It has been a week since Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, aghast with the shenanigans on Capitol Hill, took matters into his own hands. He introduced a four-page health reform bill (Four! Pages!) that expands Meidcare, i.e., the public option that already exists in this country. His simple bill is called “the Public Option [...]

In the eye of the health reform storm, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been backing away from the public health insurance option for weeks, despite a drive spearheaded on the Hill by Colorado lawmakers Rep. Jared Polis and Sen. Michael Bennet to include the option as the best way to truly extend coverage [...]

Last night lefty blogs lit up with the news that Colorado’s Sen. Mark Udall, after weeks of silence on the issue, threw in with Colorado Democratic colleague Sen. Michael Bennet in his drive to convince Majority Leader Harry Reid to reintroduce a pubic health insurance option into the Senate’s version of the health reform legislation [...]

A trio of groups that has been rallying support for the public option health insurance plan is puzzled over the fact the Colorado Democratic Senator Mark Udall has not come out as a supporter of the plan. Udall’s silence on the matter is particularly notable given that Colorado’s other Democratic U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, has [...]

Greg Sargent has the scoop:
“Senator Harry Reid’s office says that if a final decision is made to pass health reform via reconciliation, the Majority Leader would support holding a reconciliation vote on the public option.”
The actual statement from Reid’s office, though, is odd.

U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton railed against Sen. Michael Bennet this week for a letter he wrote in favor of passing health reform legislation that includes a public insurance option. She believes Coloradans don’t want a public option because she thinks they don’t want lawmakers to pass any health reform legislation at all. She says [...]

DENVER– U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and his Democratic primary rival Andrew Romanoff met for a debate in Denver last night. There wasn’t much debate. The main area of disagreement came when Romanoff challenged Bennet to decline to accept Political Action Committee, or special interest, campaign money. The challenge was expected. Romanoff, who has lagged seriously behind Bennet in fundraising for half a year, announced in January that he was eschewing PAC money. The campaign had returned PAC money it received in the fall. Bennet dismissed the challenge on stage and he dismissed it more fully in comments he made to the Colorado Independent after the debate ended. He characterized the challenge as not fully considered and opportunistic. He also said it was unrealistic, given the price tag of a political race where Republican rivals were unlikely to voluntarily limit their fundraising abilities.

The Wall Street Journal Wednesday painted a bleak picture of Capitol Hill Democrats wandering about without a map on health reform in the wake of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, as if the blow of recognition that an anti-health reform Republican is taking Teddy Kennedy’s seat has dazed the caucus leaders out of all [...]

Colorado U.S. Rep. Jared Polis drafted a letter with fellow Democratic freshman Chellie Pingree, urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to revisit the Senate version of the legislation in order to add a public option and then pass the bill through the process known as reconciliation, where it would only take 51 votes. A [...]