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Reid: Public Option Will Be in Health Care Bill |
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced in a Capitol Hill press conference today that he will send a health care reform bill to the Senate floor that includes a public option. States will have until 2014 to decide if they want to participate in the public plan.
Reid said he was optimistic that health care reform will pass:
“I feel good about progress we have made within our caucus and with the White House, and we are all optimistic about reform because of the unprecedented momentum that exists.
“I believe that a public option can achieve the goal of bringing meaningful reform to our broken system. It will protect consumers, keep insurers honest and ensure competition. And that’s why we intend to include it on the bill that will be submitted to the Senate for consideration.”
In a telephone press conference this morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said any real health care reform bill must include a robust public option that helps lower premiums and keeps insurance companies honest by guaranteeing competition.
Real reform also must require employers to pay their fair share by providing health coverage or contributing to help pay for subsidies, Trumka said. Real reform should ensure that working families who already are struggling to pay for health care insurance are not asked to pay even more in the form of a new excise tax on their coverage, he added.
There are still things that still need to be fixed in the Senate bill, according to the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) coalition, but Reid deserves thanks for including a public option. Click here to add your name to an HCAN the petition thanking Reid for fighting for America.
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Five more years with no health insurance… And labor spent how many millions on the Democrats for this? What a worthless bunch of neo-con men, only slightly less worse than their Republican partners in crime.
Meanwhile, no one is pushing EFCA; labor law reform is forgotten. And there isn’t any real progressive forward thinking agenda to rally around. How about making some DEMANDS instead of settling for half-baked ‘reforms’ that will make things worse? Start with Single Payer Medicare For All, Repeal Taft-Hartley, cut the bloated military budget, create jobs by investing in alternative energy, build new health clinics, train more nurses, fund college education through progressive taxation so it is free, develop mass transit and make it free, build affordable housing…. surely we can do better than yet another corporate scam foisted on us by the twin parties of war and greed.
Please contact your representatives and the White House stating that a “public option” not open to ALL citizens who prefer it is NOT a “public option” at all.
As now written, it ismy understanding that the “public option” now being considered would only be available to a tiny percentage of the American population.
I want a choice!!!! All Americans should be given the choice if being insured by their government instead of entities whose only interest is to make a profit.