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$1 Million Per Year To Kill The Public Option

Yesterday, five Democratic United States Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark), Bill Nelson (D-Fla) and Tom Carper (D-Del) voted against the a proposal to put a government administered public option in the health reform bill that will come out of the Senate Finance Committee.

Americans support the notion of a government administered health insurance plan by a margin of 65% to 26%. According to the same poll, people who identify themselves as Democrats favor the public option by a margin of 81% to 12%. That’s nearly 7 to 1 in favor of, yet the representatives of the Democrat party in the Senate Finance Committee only voted for the public option at a ratio of 8 to 5. Perhaps the most interesting number revealed by this poll is that Republican voters favor the public option 47% to 42%.

So why can’t the people’s representatives in Washington get behind the public option? Specifically, why can’t these five Democrats get behind it when 81% of people in their party want the option?

Look at the amount of money the health industry has pumped into these five Democrat’s coffers:

- Max Baucus got $7,734,102,

- Blanche Lincoln received $4,190,592,

- Ken Conrad took in $3,287,891,

- Bill Nelson was given $2,414,895

- Tom Carper accepted $1,592,380 from health industry interests.

If money is the reason these five Democrats rejected the public option, then it only took a little over 19 million dollars over 20 years to buy the five votes the health insurance industry needed to kill any meaningful reform to their industry.

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