Hagan says she supports public option

by kmr on July 3rd, 2009

Sen. Kay Hagan joined fellow Dems on the HELP committee in supporting a public option in health care reform. TPM has the story here.
Jame Hamser of FireDogLake has been on this story from jump street.
Betsy at BlueNC is ready to make nice.
My feeling on this has been that progressives in this state worked very hard for Hagan and were more than a little peeved when she didn’t come out in support on a very key part of the reform. The CBO pretty much made it clear why it was key when it compared the numbers of a plan with and one without a public option. The public route was far superior, covers more people and is less costly.
Jane’s right in that activism certainly helped. I’m not convinced, though, that Hagan wasn’t just trying to be cautious and got caught flat-footed when it came time to declare support. The lesson, if any, is that there needs to be a little better flow of communication between the Senator and her communities of support — including progressives.
Health Care access and affordability has been the number one issue of concern for most Americans for the past several decades. I think this battle has been going on for so long that a lot of insiders — media and politicians and policy makers — are underestimating how powerful an issue it is to people. We want this fixed. Now. And for Real.

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