Congress continues to work on a compromise health-care reform proposal, focusing on whether to offer a government-financed public health insurance plan. Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) suggested that “Republicans were open to considering a public plan as an option…as long as it operated under the same rules as private plans.” During a press conference on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) emphasized that Democrats were open to all options — even politically rife ones like raising taxes — in order to achieve health care reform that would cover every American. “We’re putting everything on the table,” she said, though she noted that much of the financing could come through spending “more wisely, in terms of prevention, in terms of early intervention, in terms of information technology.” Indeed, Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, pledged that the Obama administration’s health care plan would be “self-financing and also brings down costs over time both for families and for the federal government.” Yet as progressives seek to expand coverage and hold down costs, conservatives and lobbying groups are stonewalling on reform.

From: thinkprogress.org