Harkin supports reform bill with no public option or Medicare buy-in

Even if a version of health care reform legislation in the U.S. Senate does not include a public option or a Medicare expansion, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said it still has enough positive attributes to garner his support.

Liberal blog Talking Points Memo caught Harkin on his way into a caucus meeting Monday night “sounding defeatest about the chance that a Medicare buy-in or public option trigger will survive Sen. Joe Lieberman’s, I-CT, decision to block the compromises this weekend.”

Asked by a reporter if the Medicare buy-in will be pulled out, Harkin said “looks that way,” before praising a Democratic health care bill without the two public option compromises.

“There’s enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move,” he said. “All the insurance reforms, all the stuff we wrote so hard for prevention and wellness in there, the workforce development issues that we have in there, the reimbursement based on quality not on quantity — there’s good stuff in this bill. It’s a giant step forward, changing the paradigm of health care in America.”

Democratic lawmakers announced a plan to alter the legislation in light of Lieberman’s promise to help Republicans filibuster it. That leaves Democrats the option of passing a bill that excludes many of the principals most valued by their liberal base or abandoning the proposal altogether.

For months, Harkin, who chairs the powerful Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has said the public option will be included in health care legislation. In October, Harkin told reporters it made no sense for a “vast majority” of Democrats to to bow to the handful of moderates who have come out against the plan.

A frustrated Harkin told reporters last week that the filibuster is an abuse of a senator’s power and that he is considering a bill that would end the practice. Ironically, Lieberman co-sponsored legislation with Harkin in the mid-90s that would have done just that.