Public Option In

The Senate health care bill will contain a public option with the "opt-out" provisions I've discussed previously on this blog. Although there have been whispers that the public option was back for a few days now, this is still quite a turnaround for something most of the mainstream media declared dead a few weeks ago. This development shows that Harry Reid is confident that he has the votes to cut off debate and prevent a filibuster when the bill is introduced after it is scored by the Congressional Budget Office. With the public option included the bill will likely lose the support of the lone Republican, Olympia Snowe, who might have voted for health care reform. However, I don't think it really matters. This is a Democratic bill and getting one Republican to vote for it isn't going to change that. Maybe this means Democrats wont have to water the bill down and make it worse to please the Maine twins like they did with stimulus. It will be a close call and I'm sure there's much more health care kabuki theatre to come.