Public Option Popular

Somebody remind me why we worked so hard last year to give the Democratic Party a majority? Kevin Drum posts this chart that Democrats are clearly aware of, since it came from Pelosi.


So as Kevin asks, what is the problem?

They have a huge majority in the Senate, the public is strongly in favor of a public option, and yet....for some reason they can't round up the votes to pass it. Hell, they can't even round up a normal majority to pass it out of the Finance Committee, let alone a supermajority to overcome an eventual filibuster.

Furthermore, the health care industry isn't really that concerned about it passing. They're "privately acknowledging that a public option will not come close to putting them out of business. It may reduce their profits from 'astronomical' to 'solid' but again, as the insurance industry admits, 'we can have both a public and private system.'"

As Kevin notes, "At a wonk level, a bill without a public option can be perfectly good. But wonks aren't a large voting bloc, and among people who do vote, the public option is very popular. So, um, why not pass it?" I'd like an answer to that question as well. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

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