Labor Leaders Mull Strategies on Health Bill("Their goal is to fight for a better bill... ")

New York Times ^ | December 16, 2009 | Katharine Q. Seeleye

[mdittmar]

The scuttling of the public option from the Senate health care bill has infuriated organized labor and left their leaders in a bind about how to proceed.

Top labor officials of several unions are meeting with their executives today, and some plan to meet on Thursday, to devise their strategies, now that the Senate has dropped the public option, a government-run health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. It was the central provision for which labor has been fighting.

A sense of urgency was building, as a deadline bears down on the Senate. In order to pass a bill by Christmas, as President Obama has requested, the chamber needs to start taking a series of procedural votes on Thursday.

The executive council of the AFL-CIO met this morning and this afternoon; the executive board of the Service Employees International Union is to meet later this afternoon. The steering committee of Health Care for America Now, or HCAN, a coalition of labor and liberal groups, plans to meet on Thursday.

“We’re very, very angry and disappointed that the public option is not in the Senate bill,” said Richard Kirsch, national campaign director for HCAN.

“We’re meeting to consider where we are, but we will work aggressively to make the bill better in conference,” he said, referring to the eventual melding of the Senate bill with the one passed earlier by the House.

[mdittmar]

Their goal is to fight for a better bill once it is combined with the House bill.