Despite lack of public option, liberal coalition still calls for Senate passage of healthcare bill

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The left may be livid at Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Senate Democratic leaders who caved to his demand to remove any public option from the healthcare bill that Democrats are pushing to pass next week.

But bowing to reality, Health Care for America Now, the influential coalition of liberal activist groups, plans to send a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) this afternoon calling for passage of the legislation, said the group’s campaign manager, Richard Kirsch.

“There are major problems with the Senate bill,” Kirsch said in an interview today. “But if the Senate doesn’t act, there will be no healthcare reform. ... The place to fix [the Senate bill] is in a conference committee” with House and Senate leaders at the table.

The House healthcare bill includes a provision to create a government-run insurance plan that would be available to Americans who do not get their coverage through work.

Kirsh said it was ‘despicable’ that Lieberman -- after backing the idea just a few months earlier -- had renounced a compromise plan to expand Medicare to people 55 to 64 years old, and he labeled the senator “a neutron bomb for the insurance industry” in healthcare negotiations.

But he said liberal activists were hopeful that House Democrats would succeed in restoring a government plan in the final bill that is sent to President Obama.

“If anyone thinks that this is the last public option story we’ll be reading, they are very mistaken,” he said.

Health Care for America Now’s members include MoveOn.org, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO and the American Nurses Assn.

-- Noam N. Levey