Obama Health Care Plan

Obama Health Care Plan: Despite the recent surge of support in the Senate for a government-run health insurance option, U.S. President Obama chose not to include one of the most popular elements of reform in the plan he is presenting to a bipartisan group of lawmakers Thursday.

The Obama plan explicitly bridges the differences between Senate and House legislation on issues both large and small, but on the public option — which is included in the House bill, but not in the Senate’s — Obama is entirely silent.

Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Obama would “absolutely” fight for a public option if Senate leadership decided to go for it. “[I]f it’s part of the decision of leadership to move forward, absolutely,” Sebelius said. “The president said from the outset he thought that was a great way to provide cost reduction and competition moving forward, but if that is not the choice of the majority moving forward, I think there are other ways to get there.”

Since then, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he would work with his colleagues to find the votes needed for it; Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third ranking Democrat, pushed for it to be included; and Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, joined in the call as well.

But neither that nor the public option’s consistently strong appeal in public-opinion polls was enough to persuade Obama to get behind it.

Indeed, after months of watching Obama say generally that he supports the public option while doing little to see it implemented into law, backers of the idea were unsurprised it was left out of his final offer.