BY ROGER LARSEN

OF THE PLAINSMAN

Realizing months ago that a government-run health care plan faced an uphill battle, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., said she and other Blue Dog Democrats considered alternatives.

After an August recess filled with contentious town hall sessions in a number of states, Congress returns to Washington, D.C., to resume the debate and hear directly from President Obama in a joint session.

“At this point, I think including a public option makes it a deal breaker,” Herseth Sandlin said in an interview Saturday at the South Dakota State Fair.

“The controversy surrounding the public option certainly doesn’t surprise me,” she said.

In his own town hall meeting at the fair on Thursday, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., predicted no Republican support for a government option.

The death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, the absence of ailing Sen. Robert Byrd and skeptics among a handful of other Senate Democrats mean Obama won’t get 60 votes in the chamber without changes.

In the days leading up to his Wednesday address, the White House is said to be talking about drafting its own health care bill. So far, the administration has left the specifics up to congressional negotiators.

Herseth Sandlin said she and other moderate Democrats have worked to slow the process down, and embraced the recess as a time when Congress and Americans could share information.

“I knew there was skepticism about how a public option would work and how that would be structured,” she said.

But she also knew there would be concerns about the cost of the legislation, which is one of the reasons changes are needed.

“We have to be just as serious about reforming the delivery system and addressing long-term costs as we are about finding ways to expand coverage,” Herseth Sandlin said.

“We can’t move millions of more people into a broken system,” she said.

But she said she has also heard misinformation regarding components that aren’t in the current proposal.

Throughout the summer, and even after Obama’s election when people recognized that a health care bill was more likely to be at the forefront, she said she had many productive meetings with providers, insurance representatives, constituents and others.

Herseth Sandlin was asked about Thune’s position that a government-run plan is not the answer.

“I don’t think it’s essential and I think if you’re going to include one it has to be structured to ensure it’s a level playing field,” she said. “It can’t crowd out private companies.

“We could accomplish the same goal of providing competition and choice through a different mechanism that doesn’t cause so many people heartburn over a government-run program,” she said.

One alternative, for example, is a co-op, something rural Americans are quite familiar with.

“We’ve seen areas of the country where they’ve worked well,” Herseth Sandlin said.

Any health care proposal needs to be revenue neutral to gain her support. Not only that, but in the long-term it needs to bend the cost trajectory downward, she said.

“It has to be something that really deals with the cost concern, to get a better return on the investment of our current health care dollars,” Herseth Sandlin said.

For the complete article see the 09-06-2009 issue.

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