Bill Nelson: "Public option will not pass" [View All]

[t0dd]

Source: The Ledger

Health care reform will pass Congress this year, but without many of the provisions in the House bill and without a public option.

And Osama bin Laden will be found by the United States within a year, but it will not end the threat of terrorism.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson made those predictions Monday during his tour and teaching assignment at Summerlin Academy, the military-style public school in Bartow.

Nelson, who like his colleagues in Congress has been touring his state during the August recess, later had lunch with members of Citrus Mutual in Lakeland and heard concerns of the industry.

The Melbourne Democrat's visits back home were altered slightly for Friday and the weekend because members of the Senate went to Boston for the funeral of the Sen. Ted Kennedy.

During a question-and-answer session Monday with cadets, Nelson said the House version of health care reform cannot get the necessary 60 votes to avoid a filibuster and pass in the Senate.

Nelson later told The Ledger in an interview that the public option also can't pass the Senate.

"The public option is only one of hundreds of issues concerned with health care reform," he said. "Public option means different things to different people. Some people think of it as socialized medicine, but that type is not and has not ever been considered.

"Still any public option will not pass," he said.

The Senate has not written its version of the health care reform bill yet. That will begin Sept. 8, when senators arrive back in Washington, D.C.

The House version of health care "has not been endorsed by the Obama Administration and will not get through the Senate," he said.

The Senate version will come out of the Senate Finance Committee, on which Nelson sits, probably sometime in late September.

"A big part of (the bill) will be shoring up Medicare and Medicaid. We do not have a bill yet because the Senate does not have consensus. We tried all summer to get consensus," he said.

"I want consensus so that we can have as many people as possible with health care coverage and we cannot get the 60 votes in the Senate with any public option," Nelson said.

Read more: http://www.theledger.com/article/20090831/NEWS/908315049/1410?Title=Sen-Nelson-Health-Care-Reform-to-Pass

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:argh: :grr: