Baucus target of ad favoring a public option

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is the target of an advertising campaign by two progressive groups advocating for the inclusion of a public option in legislation to overhaul the health care systeml, according to Capitol Briefing, a Washington Post blog.

The ad from the Progressive Campaign Change Committee and Democracy for America, which will air Tuesday in Baucus' home state of Montana and Washington, D.C., comes as Baucus' Committee "prepares to vote on a bill that likely will not contain a so-called public insurance option, which many liberals consider crucial to reform but which is strongly opposed by Republicans and private insurers" (Eggen, 9/28).

The Wall Street Journal's blog, Washington Wire reports: "The ad features a local Montana father who has over $100,000 in medical debt because he has no health insurance, and can't get any because of a congenital heart condition. 'None of this debt would have piled up if I'd had the option of buying into a public health insurance plan,' the father says in the ad. … Sen. Baucus, when you take millions of dollars from health and insurance interests that oppose reform, and oppose giving families like mine the choice of a public option, I have to ask: 'Whose side are you on?''" (Davis, 9/28).

CBSNEWS' blog, Political Hotsheet: Baucus has taken more than $1.7 million in political contributions from the health sector for the 2010 election cycle, and his health care bill does not include a public option. However, the senator is on record as personally supporting a public option" (Condon, 9/28).