President Obama is scheduled to tour the Cleveland Clinic Thursday, followed by a town hall meeting at Shaker Heights High School. The president is looking to shore up public support for a health care reform prescription that includes a so-called "public option" - a government-run health insurance plan that would compete with private insurance.
Conservative critics are skeptical. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal took several democratic senators to task --- including Ohio's Sherrod Brown --- for voting against an amendment that would require lawmakers and congressional staff to sign-up for the public plan --- implying that the legislators didn't want to give up their own cushy health benefits. At a Cleveland appearance Monday, Brown admitted that he'd been out of the chamber at the time and that the health committee chair had cast the no vote in Brown's name by proxy.
SHERROD BROWN: it was one of those issues that was introduced that wasn't a big deal of the five hundred amendments that we considered. I'm fine with going into the public option myself or going into the federal employees benefit health plan. I've paid my own health insurance for sixteen years, because of a promise and I'll go wherever I go with it. But, I'm fine with it.
Brown expressed hope that the "public option" plan will make it through Congress this fall and be on the President's desk by November.
