Update: Schmuck Schumer’s public option also fails to pass Finance Committee. Just how many of these public options are there? I wonder if Olympia Snowe will commit political suicide now by bringing up the trigger amendment?

From the New York Times Senator John D. Rockefeller IV’s public option fails in Finance Committee:

WASHINGTON — After a half-day of animated debate, the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected efforts by liberal Democrats to add a government-run health insurance plan to major health care legislation, dealing the first official setback to an idea that many Democrats, including President Obama, say they support.

All of the other versions of the health care legislation advancing in Congress — a bill approved by the Senate health committee and a trio of bills in the House — include some version of the government-run plan, or public option.

But the Finance Committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, long ago removed it from his proposal because of stiff opposition from Republicans who call the public plan a step toward “socialized medicine.”

The committee on Tuesday afternoon voted, 15 to 8, to reject an amendment proposed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, to add a public option called the Community Choice Health Plan, an outcome that underscored the lack of support for a government plan among many Democrats.

Mr. Baucus voted no, as did Senators Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, , and Bill Nelson of Florida, joining all 10 Republicans in opposition.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who voted in favor of the proposal, said supporters of the public option would keep on fighting. He has offered a separate amendment to establish such an option.

“We are going to keep at this and at this and at this until we succeed, because we believe in it so strongly,” he said.

Advocates of a public plan say it would provide crucial competition for private insurers and that the larger goals of the legislation, to extend coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans and to slow the steep rise in health care costs, cannot be achieved without it.

The debate came as the Finance Committee resumed debate over the health care bill after a three-day weekend because of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

After the vote on Mr. Rockefeller’s proposal, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, was scheduled to put forward his own public option amendment and it, too, was expected to be defeated.

In the emotionally charged debate, Mr. Rockefeller railed against the practices of private insurers, who he suggested were largely preying on a defenseless American public. “They’re getting away with terrible things,” he said.

But Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, stepped in to voice his party’s fierce opposition to the idea of government-run insurance.

“A government run plan will ultimately force private insurers out of business,” Mr. Grassley said, adding that supporters of the public option were trying to open a back door toward a fully government-run, or single-payer, health system like those in Canada or England.

“Public option is a step toward a completely government run plan that they are hoping for,” Mr. Grassley said.

And he rejected assertions by Democrats, including Mr. Rockefeller, that the public plan would compete fairly because it would have to follow the same rules as private insurers.

“The federal government will not only be running the plan, it will also be running the market in which it competes with the private plans and that doesn’t sound like a level playing field to me,” Mr. Grassley said.

Democrats quickly rose up to answer the charges, including Mr. Schumer, who challenged Mr. Grassley to spell out his views on Medicare, the government insurance plan for Americans over age 65 and for the disabled.

“I just want to know what you think of Medicare, which is a much more government-run program,” Mr. Schumer said.

“I think that Medicare is part of the social fabric of America just like Social Security is,” Mr. Grassley said. “To say that I support it is not to say that it’s the best system that it could be.”

“But it is a government-run plan,” Mr. Schumer shot back.

Mr. Grassley, a veteran Senate debater, insisted that Medicare did not pose a threat to the private insurance industry. “It’s not easy to undo a Medicare plan without also hurting a lot of private initiatives that are coupled with it,” he said.

Mr. Schumer pounced. “You are supportive of Medicare,” he said. “I just don’t understand the difference. That’s a government-run plan and the main knock you have made on Senator Rockefeller’s amendment, and I am sure on mine, is that it’s government-run.”

The efforts by Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Schumer to add a public plan to the bill were really just a dress rehearsal for a fuller battle that will play out on the Senate floor in the weeks ahead.

Senate Democratic leaders, however, do not believe there will be sufficient support to add the public option to the bill.

Aides to the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, say that he will not include a provision for the public option when he combines the measures coming out of the finance and health committees.

Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Schumer and other supporters of a government-run plan will bring floor amendments trying once again to add it to the legislation.

And even when the debate over the public option is taken up on the Senate floor, most likely it will not be finished.

There is wider support for a government-run insurance plan in the House, where the Democratic caucus is more liberal. And if the House bill includes a public option, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated, the issue will ultimately be decided in a conference proceedings to reconcile the Senate and House bills.

As an alternative, Mr. Baucus included in his bill a proposal to create private, nonprofit health insurance cooperatives to compete with private insurers.

The Congressional Budget Office has questioned whether the cooperatives would really have much effect. And there are Democrats and Republicans on the Finance Committee who have proposed amendments that would strip the cooperative provisions.

The main architect of that proposal, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, said during the committee debate that it would provide “strong not for profit competition to the private insurers.” But he warned that hospitals in his home state would be devastated by Mr. Rockefeller’s proposal, which would initially tie the public plan’s payment rates to the rates paid by Medicare.

Many hospitals, doctors and other health care providers say Medicare rates are too low.

Mr. Conrad urged his colleagues to consider his alternative,. “We have gotten locked in a very sterile debate ,” he said.

More from The Hill: Rockefeller’s public option fails in Senate Finance Committee

Now it’s time to kill co-operatives which are nothing more than a Trojan Horse for a public option.

In other news and opinion:

How to Lose Friends and Annoy Your Enemies

Hear Our Cry, Obama?. Check out the 1st comment.

Video: Whoopi says Polanski didn’t commit “rape-rape”

Great advice on the left’s race-card playing

Is Franken ACORN’s Man In The Senate?

Rockefeller, Schumer push public-option amendment in Senate

Update: The Nightmare That Is The Senate Finance Committee Healthcare Proposal – RINOCare Gone Wild. Are you ready for governement controlled health insurance cartels? Socialized healthcare vs. fascist healthcare, the dangerous bi-partisan compromise.

The endgame is here and the most important aspect that could kill the above linked post concerning the Senate Finance Committee healthcare bill and any other form of ObamaCare is being ignored by not only the media, but major bloggers everywhere. The only other reference I can find other than on the Social Security Institute website (see link below) is from FreedomWorks. Given that these two amendments kill any chance of reconciliation, I am at a loss to explain the complete lack of interest in this topic.

There were two amendments offered by Senator DeMint prior to the health bill conferences and debate in the Senate – a point-of-order amendment and instruction to conferees. The following is taken directly from an email Mr. Uhler received from Dr. Lawrence Hunter of the Social Security Institute that was forwarded to me and placed in the first link above. Dr. Hunter also has a very long and distinguished career and served as policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan during Reagan’s second term. He also served as a Member of the Board of Advisors for the NTLC:

During deliberations on the Senate Budget Resolution earlier this year, Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) introduced a point-of-order amendment that would require a 60-vote majority to pass “any bill, joint resolution, amendment, motion, or conference report that eliminates the ability of Americans to keep their health plan or their choice of doctor (as determined by the Congressional Budget Office).” The Senate approved the DeMint Amendment unanimously.

Subsequently, before the Senate Budget Resolution went to a Conference Committee where differences with the House Budget Resolution were to be worked out, DeMint offered a motion to instruct the Conferees not only to insist on retaining the 60-vote provision in the final Conference Report but also to widen the scope of the provision to cover any provision and so forth that decreases the number of Americans enrolled in private health insurance while increasing the number enrolled in government-managed, rationed health care. The Demint motion to instruct passed the Senate by an overwhelming vote of 79 to 14.

As a matter of congressional comity, the House ordinarily would have been expected to accede to the Senate provision since it affected Senate rules that applied only to the Senate. Remarkably, Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Kent Conrad, allowed the Demint 60-vote requirement to be removed from the Budget Resolution in Conference.

Prior to the above statements by Dr. Hunter is information of great importance:

However, with a united Republican front in the Senate, Democrats would be hard pressed to jam a bill as comprehensive and detested as ObamaCare down Americans’ throats. Current polls indicate that more people oppose ObamaCare than support it. Moreover, Senate Republicans stand on very strong procedural grounds for resisting a bum’s rush on government-run healthcare through the Reconciliation process. It would take an act of extraordinary arrogance and recklessness for the Democratic Leadership to use Reconciliation this way.

If agreed upon to be enforced, the Demint amendments would in effect kill the reconciliation process and force 60 votes to pass ObamaCare in its present form – even with the co-operative option, which is nothing more than a Trojan horse for what ultimately will become a single-payer system. Mr. Uhler has identified five Republican Senators that need to align themselves with the party and forgo their proclivity to reach across the aisle. If this story goes national and pressure is brought to bear on these five Republican’s to stand firm with their party, then it is reasonable to assume the above conclusion from Dr. Hunter to be correct. Under these circumstances I do not believe the Democrats in the Senate would have the votes to commit “an act of extraordinary arrogance and recklessness”. However, wide public knowledge of the amendments and the subsequent pressure on Senators to follow their own rules requires national exposure. The average American is completely unaware of the procedural hurdles that Senator Jim Demint placed to block the ramming of a very unpopular plan onto the American people.

One could reasonably ask themselves why the public must follow rules, where the Senate can choose to ignore them. It will focus attention on the contempt that some Senate elitists have for the public. However, to date no major conservative talk show, media outlet, or think tank has covered this tactic. Everyone is talking about Blue Dogs killing the legislation. While certainly one strategy to pursue, I personally believe Blue Dogs have a habit of growling but, at the end of the day, many of them will roll over. I prefer a multi-pronged strategy that would include the above approach outlined by Dr. Hunter. On the legislative front, what is called for is combining public pressure on the Blue Dogs in the House and placing pressure on five Senate Republican’s to stand firm with their party and not negotiate ObamaCare Lite with the cooperative option replacing nationalized health care. Instead the public should insist the Demint rules be followed. This could very well kill the bill as it exists today. We could then press the reset button and start talking about real reform.

Using Reconciliation to force feed ObamaCare to an unwilling nation would backfire in ways that Democrats will find difficult to imagine. That is the type of atmosphere some liberals, such as Chuck Schumer are willing to create now and for the foreseeable future.

Here is the link to the story on the Social Security Institute article from Dr. Hunter:

In other news and opinion:

As the Byrd Rule Flies: Why Dems Can’t Use Reconciliation to Pass Radical ObamaCare

Co-ops a federal-subsidy trough

From Moe Lane at Redstate: Howard Dean threatens primary challenges on public option ‘no’ votes.

Is ObamaCare Constitutional?

Blue Dog: Hey, maybe we should start over on ObamaCare. Won’t happen, but this can be killed in the Senate. I am still astounded nobody has picked up on this yet.

ObamaCare: Does the media matter?