Liberals Assail Senate Health Care Compromise

5192102A bipartisan group of six senators indicated Monday they are closer than ever to reaching a compromise they hope to turn into a moderate health care bill. Liberal activists, commentators and legislators, however, are blasting the negotiations, with some suggesting a "bipartisan" deal will not get very far.

When news broke that a group of legislators in the Senate Finance Committee are nearing a compromise on health care reform that nixes some key Democratic proposals like a government-sponsored insurance plan, prominent liberal voices assailed the negotiations.

"Saying you're going to do health care reform without a public option is kind of like saying you're going to fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan by invading Iraq," Cenk Uygur, host of liberal talk show the Young Turks, wrote Tuesday on the Huffington Post. "It misses the point - on purpose. It promises to do more harm than good. And it's what was planned all along."

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation magazine, said, "conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform."

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said on MSNBC Monday evening that the compromise proposed -- which would replace a government-sponsored insurance option with non-profit cooperatives and leave out an employer mandate -- is not health care reform at all.

"This compromise does nothing except reform insurance," he said. "It is not worthless because it makes it fair, but it is not health care reform."

Dean's liberal group Democrats for America posted an open letter to President Obama on its Web site Tuesday that says "First and foremost, it is time to cut the Republicans loose."

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, suggested the same on a radio show on Monday, the Hill reports.

"At some point they're going to have to pull the plug on that process" of bipartisanship, he said of the Senate Democrats. "What concerns me about what's happened in the Senate Finance Committee is that they've had a whole lot of time to work these things out, and just don't seem to be able to break the impasse."

The bipartisan group of six, led by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), may even face opposition from other Demcrats in the committee. Liberals like Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) have essentially been left out of the negotiations but will not allow a deal to go through the committee without their consent, according to Bloomberg.

Some Democrats in the commitee would even prefer Baucus leave any kind of coverage scheme out of his bill completely -- rather than include a co-op plan -- so that the party can push for the public option once the full Senate takes up the issue, the Washington Post reported.

The White House maintains the president has still not taken sides on many of these issues, including the debate over the public plan.

"I don't believe that the president has come down one versus the other in terms of denoting co-ops equal to or above public option," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday.

Mr. Obama's political arm in the DNC, Organizing for America, is more aggressively supporting the legislation in the House of Representatives, which includes a public option. The group is planning a rally in front of the office of a moderate House Democrat on the fence on health care, Politico reports.