WASHINGTON – White House officials and senior Senate Democrats at work on health care legislation are strongly considering a requirement for the federal government to sell insurance in direct competition with private industry, officials said Thursday, with individual states permitted to drop out of the system.
Liberals in Congress long have viewed such an approach, called a public option, as an essential ingredient of the effort to overhaul the nation's health care system, and President Barack Obama has said frequently he favors it. But he has also made clear it is not essential to the legislation he seeks, a gesture to Democratic moderates who generally have shied away from it.
SOURCE: Associated Press > Yahoo News
