Earlier today, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told me something somewhat unexpected. “I’m looking very much now at this opt out public option,” he said, “not opt in but opt out–so you start out with a public option, and if you don’t like it you can opt out….that has a sense of freedom.”
Why unexpected? Because here’s what he told me just last week: “I don’t start out favoring that,” he said. “You know, opt out is sort of like trigger. It sounds good, it makes people feel good, but the question is, Is it good? And I don’t think it really is. If it’s the only way you can get the votes, then that’s a decision that will have to be made over my head.”
That’s a pretty notable change, and reflective of the political appeal of the opt-out proposal within the Democratic party. Rockefeller and other senators have come to believe that, in addition to being more likely to get the votes needed to pass in the Senate, it’s also a policy fix that will have almost, if not the same, impact as a fully national public option.
This afternoon, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY)–a very visible public option advocate–said he could back an opt-out clause. “I would accept and would be open to the idea, after the program’s up and running a couple years, if a state wants to opt out, if they want to leave 25, 30, 50 thousand of their citizens without that choice,” Weiner said. “I dont believe it’s gonna happen. So i would accept that kind of an opt-out thing.” Rockefeller likewise believes that, once consumers purchase in to the public option, they’ll raise hell if their state governments try to take it away from them.
And it’s not just public option enthusiasts who are sounding off positively about the concept. Here’s what Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) told me earlier this week: “while there’s support for public option generally, generically, when you start talking about it specifically as it relates to states being able to opt out or opt in, have their own, the support overwhelmingly goes up to 76 percent.”
Again, the opt out is gaining steam politically, but it’s still very young from a legislative perspective, so it would be easy to overinterpret statements like these. Let’s just say that we probably haven’t heard the last of it.
