by Rick Moore, VP for Communications

Can we see the cavalry on the horizon, coming to save the ‘public option’? Observers are revealing glimpses of the strategies Democrats may use to pass meaningful health care reform AND achieve the bipartisan support that seems so important to President Obama.

Jonathan Weisman and Naftali Bendavid of The Wall Street Journal predict that health care reform will be repackaged into several bills with “expensive” provisions grouped together. This way Democrats can pass those parts of the proposals Republicans cannot accept, while claiming bipartisanship on other parts Republicans like. Read their August 20, 2009 story HERE.

If the WSJ is correct, Democrats will probably have to use “reconciliation” to get the ’public option’ through the Senate. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic  offers a useful review of this difficult-to-understand strategy and its possible consequences. Read his August 20, 2009 post HERE.

Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times write August 19 that Democrats are abandoning efforts to attract Republican support for health care reform. They will focus, instead, on negotiating with ‘Blue Dog” Democrats, which may prove as daunting a challenge. Read their story HERE.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times summarizes the sad outcome of the healthcare debate as of August 18 — no public option and lots of new customers make the insurers happy, and no bargaining of drug prices leaves the pharmaceutical companies happy. “The White House was rolled,” he writes. Non-profit cooperatives “are like sending peewee footballers up against the Super Bowl champs,” he observes. Read his essay HERE.

Robert Creamer, a contributor to HuffingtonPost.com, disagrees with the common wisdom and lists three reasons there WILL be a public option in the final health care reform bill. One of them is that if the private insurance industry is allowed to, it will capture its new customers and start raising rates to increase profits. Read his view HERE.

Nate Silver, the always perceptive observer at FiveThirtyEight.com, suggests that we liberals may have been deluding ourselves to think it was ever really possible. You may find his vote counting educational. He goes on to say that even without the public option, the bill looks like it will contain important changes that make it worthy of support. Read his essay HERE.

Paul Begala, democratic strategist and political analyst, and former consultant to President Clinton during the 1993-94 health-reform effort, writes in the Washington Post that we should remember how Social Security came together in the 1930s. “No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt’s original Social Security Act,” he states, but explains that it provided the base for what has evolved into a truly fundamental part of the nation’s safety net. Read his essay HERE.

So while it is disturbing to accept a ‘reform’ bill with less reform than we wanted, and while there is still much to happen before a final bill is written, even without the public option, the effort may still be beneficial.

This is NOT to imply that we should be quiet and accept the loss of the public option. Senate and House leaders are reminding the Obama administration that the public option is essential to their support. We should write our Senators and demand that it be included. Use the contact links to the right of this post to get started. And stay tuned. Much more is yet to come!