Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Announces Support for Government-Run Health-Care Option

It might not be considered robust enough by some more liberal members of the Democratic Party, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, appears set to announce (at 3:15pm) that he's chosen to put a national public option, giving states the chance to opt out, in his base bill that he will bring to the floor as early as next week. This is a pretty big deal, as any kind of public option seemed dead on arrival for quite some time.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid will announce his support for establishing a government-run health-insurance program that would allow individual states to opt out of the plan, a Democratic aide said today.

Reid’s move gives new momentum to the so-called public option as Congress considers the biggest changes to the U.S. medical-care system since it created Medicare, the health program for the elderly, in 1965.