Hoyer: House could pass health bill without public option

"Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday the House can pass a healthcare bill without a public option," The Hill reports. "Hoyer, who supports a public option, said 'the guts' of the healthcare bill still provide insurance coverage to 30 million people who now do not have affordable, quality healthcare. 'Reid does not have the votes for a public option so in a world of alternatives you gotta focus on what you can get,' Hoyer said."

The health care bill passed by the House had a public option "and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has been adamant that a healthcare bill would have to include a public option to be approved by the House." But "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled last week that Democrats would drop the public option from their bill, and Monday night it became clear that they would also drop a proposal to allow uninsured people as young as 55 to get healthcare through Medicare" (Hooper, 12/15).

Politico: Hoyer "also took a little swipe at the Senate Tuesday, saying that its mentality often ignores consensus opinion and caters to minority interests. 'Too often it appears that the psychology in the Senate is the psychology of one,' Hoyer said in response to a question about frustrations with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who opposes the public option and Medicare buy-in provisions in health-care overhaul legislation." The House Majority Leader dismissed the idea that the House "would avoid a lengthy melding process by adopting the Senate's bill without alterations. 'There's significant, important differences between what the Senate is proposing and what we proposed, and those matters will have to be discussed" (Sherman, 12/15).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.