Conrad and Ross Double Team Against Progressives

When the House Energy and Commerce Committee was marking up the health care bill Rep. Mike Ross submitted an amendment that gutted the public option and include legislative language to create small non-profit health insurance cooperatives. It is now clear comparing the language in Baucus' framework dealing with co-ops to Ross' amendment, that either Conrad directly or through some third party (Rahm Emanuel, Baucus, etc...) provided Ross with his legislative language for co-ops. The two documents are almost identical and and sometimes use the exact same wording:

Ross' amendment:

The governing documents of the cooperatives incorporate ethical and conflict of interest standards designed to protect against insurance industry involvement and interference in the governance of the cooperative.

Baucus' framework:

Its governing documents must incorporate ethics and conflict of interest standards protecting against insurance industry involvement and interference.

At the time Ross' amendment was submitted many Democratic senators and congressmen were both concerned and confused by Conrad's co-ops idea. It seemed that Conrad was not sharing with most of his own party what his idea of co-ops would really be, but some how Rep. Ross was provided the document.

Ross reached a “deal” to support the bill in committee if he could cripple the cost savings of the House's robust public option and insert the co-ops into the House bill. Now that the legislative language for the co-ops is included in the bill, surprise Ross no longer supports the public option.

It appears that some group of House blue dogs and conservative Democratic senators likely conspired against Speaker Pelosi and are trying to force her to accept the co-ops idea.