On Monday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) announced
that although he strongly supports the so-called public option, he
wouldn’t vote to add it to the health care bill by way of the
reconciliation process. Many senators say that passing the public
option by way of reconciliation—a procedure which bypasses the threat
of a filibuster so that the Senate can pass the bill with a simple
majority—would come across as being too partisan. Now White House Press
Secretary Robert Gibbs says there aren’t enough votes to include a public option, even using reconciliation.

The reason to include a provision for a government-run health care plan is simple. As Glenn Greenwald says,
if you’re going to force people to buy health insurance, you should
probably give them an alternative to the private plans they don’t use
as it is. Allowing people to buy into a government-run health care
program ensures that everyone has access to a minimally-acceptable
standard plan. Giving people the option to use a public plan would
hardly amount to a government takeover of the health care system. If
people didn’t like the plan, they wouldn’t have to use it.

For all the angry rhetoric about socialized medicine, the public option is actually quite popular. Reuters found
in December that almost 60% of Americans—including almost 60% of
independent voters—would like a public option provision in the final
health care bill. It even appears
to be popular—more popular than the health care bill itself—in the
states of key senators who are on the fence. Liberal activist site
FireDogLake compiled a list
of 51 senators who seem to have expressed support for a public option.
And 24 Democratic senators—including six committee chairs—have signed a
letter asking that
the public option to brought to a vote under reconciliation rules,
saying it could reduce health care costs by billions of dollars.

Although reconciliation smacks of back-room dealings, it’s hardly
undemocratic. By bypassing the filibuster—which actually has no basis
in the Constitution, but is itself simply a customary procedural
rule—it would put the public option to be put to a simple majority
vote, rather than allowing a minority of senators to prevent it from
passing. The argument against reconciliation is, in essence, that it
would be inappropriate to pass major legislation without getting the
Republicans to buy in. But the Republicans have made it clear that they
intend to block whatever plan the Democrats propose anyway. And using
the reconciliation process to pass a major piece of legislation is
hardly unprecedented. As Timothy Noah points out, reconciliation was used to pass welfare reform, COBRA, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And, as Ezra Klein says,
it’s been used more by Republicans than by Democrats. “It’s done almost
every Congress,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, “and they’re
the ones that used it more than anyone else.”