Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) is using the healthcare debate to move to the left of Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in the battle for the Democratic Senate nomination.
Sestak criticized the Republican-turned-Democrat for not fighting for a public option in the healthcare reform bill.
“If I had been over there [in the Senate], instead of going around Pennsylvania like Arlen Specter did over the past summer, [where he] said, ‘Oh, all the options are on the table, even single-payer,’ I would have been back in the Senate shaping that bill. Like I did here in the House, helping to shape it with the public option,” Sestak told The Hill.
Specter countered: “I don’t know what he expected me to do in August; nobody was around Washington.”
But neither man would say how he would vote on the final version of the bill.
Sestak voted for the House version, which contained the public option, but said he’s “opposed” to the Senate version, which doesn’t contain a government-administered insurance plan or optional Medicare buy-in for older Americans.
“Right now I’m opposed to what they have there,” Sestak said. “I don’t think it goes well enough; I don’t think we’ve had enough leadership over there to effect the needed change.”
Specter hinted he’d accept the stripped-down Senate version of the bill.
For the full article in The Hill, click here
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