Kevin Lembo, Connecticut’s state healthcare advocate, traveled to D.C. for President Obama’s health-care speech Wednesday. He’s blogging the visit:</em
357 p.m. Just left Senator Dodd. He was very kind to invite me down today to be his
guest at the joint-session. It was made clear on the floor of the Senate today that
not only will Dodd retain his chairmanship of the Banking committee, but the leadership asked him to continue leading the health reform effort in the Senate.
This is good news for CT.
There is a lot of obvious interest and speculation about the president’s message
this evening. There are bits and pieces of info floating around, but it looks like
we can expect to hear a reiteration of his support for a public option.
Reviewed the Baucus Framework on the flight down and it seems to be almost identical
to his previous outline. Not much “new” there, but many areas of concern. For those
who remember the Enzi issue of a few years back, it’s back. Licensing insurers in
one state and allowing them to sell in others.
I’ll post more later. DC is an exciting place to be today if you’re a policy nerd.