7.  Will Obama's Speech Revive the Public Option?

President Obama will address a joint session of Congress in hopes of rescuing health care reform, the debate over which devolved during the August legislative recess into partisan bickering. Few details of the speech, which Politco has called Obama's "riskiest effort to date,"  have emerged since the plans for the address were announced Wednesday, but pundits and reporters are taking their best guesses. White House senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters that the speech will be "the best way to kick off the final discussions, the final debate," and that listeners "will have a clear sense of what he proposes and what health care reform is not." Such comments lead the Associated Press to conclude that Obama is giving up hope for a bipartisan bill and that he'll begin to take a more hands-on approach to shaping the bill. The White House's meetings with Maine's moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe has others guessing that the government-run "public option" is under consideration again. Snowe has considered the public option as a backup proposal to force insurers to lower their rates, and, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein notes, "Snowe could pretty much write the bill at this point" since she's one of the few pro-reform Republicans with little to lose. Yet the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus says that the White House is warning reformers that it will no longer support the public option. In his comments about Obama's speech to Congress, Axelrod stayed on the fence, saying the public option important but not whether would be necessary for a final bill, according to the Associated Press.

Read original story in Associated Press | Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009

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