The Daily Background

Zuh? How’d this happen?

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public.
[…]
On the issue that has been perhaps the most pronounced flash point in the national debate, 57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it. Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52 percent, said they favored it. (In a June Post-ABC poll, support was 62 percent.)

As a frame of reference, 57% is roughly four percent higher than Obama got in the presidential election. Meanwhile:

As always, the legislative process is unpredictable, and the Senate is operating in isolation from the House. But with the public option potentially in the balance, Speaker Pelosi’s goal is this: present conservative Democrats in both chambers with a Hobson’s choice between a public option bill and a potentially more expensive Senate bill that may have no public option at all.

On Friday, the Washington Post ran with leaked CBO numbers, showing that House health care leaders have reduced the price tag of their bill by at least $100 billion. The numbers were preliminary–not reflective of the current state of the legislation, which is changing constantly–but they showed a definite downward trajectory in the overall cost of its reform plan.

Brilliant, if it works. Despite all the progressive complaints that anyone has against Pelosi, if she actually pulls this off, she’ll go down as one of the most effective speakers of the House in history.

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