As published for The Arena on Politico.com on March 5th, 2010:

The truth is that the public option has had up or down votes and fallen short. Two versions of the public option came before the Senate Finance Committee, which crafted the outlines of what became the Senate health care bill. Both public option alternatives failed in that committee, thanks to bipartisan opposition. Sen. Reid later tried to insert the public option into his version of what became the Senate bill but found that he could not keep his bloc of 60 non-Republicans together with the public option included. Adding the public option back in now would make an already unpopular package even less popular.

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