Government-provided Health Insurance, Public Option | featured news

44 | President calls Senate plan "a creative new framework" to provide coverage to uninsured without relying on government insurance option.

Democrats are engaged in urgent talks to work out a compromise on one of the most contentious health care issues: a proposal for the government to sell insurance in competition with private companies.

Two centrist senators, Ben Nelson and Joseph I. Lieberman, said that they were opposed the bill as it is currently written, particularly its inclusion of a new government-run insurance program.

The plan would offer a U.S.-run insurance program but drop cost controls backed by liberals. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the compromise would make healthcare more affordable for the middle class.

Support of government-backed insurance plan is a key concession to liberals, but the Senate provision would also give states the right to opt out.

In shift, many lawmakers now expect final bill will include form of government-run insurance for people without employer-based health coverage.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has told colleagues that he may include a government-run health insurance plan in a health care bill he will soon take to the Senate floor.

As Democratic congressional leaders and White House officials work to shape health care bills that will go to the House and Senate floors, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and now wins clear majority support from the public.

Measures pending in Congress push insurers to keep down costs and cover all regardless of health. Despite growing frustration with the way health insurers deny medical treatments, major healthcare bills pending in Congress would give patients little new power to challenge those sometimes life-and-death decisions.

While Obama believes a gov't-run health care would best meet his reform goals, aides say he's not demanding it.