Wicker Calls For a 72 Hour Look, Before a Final Vote on Senate Healthcare Reform

Senate healthcare reform is in negotiations this week and one Mississippi Senator is asking that Americans get a good look at the results before a final vote is taken. Patty Davis reports.

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin, Chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He says national healthcare reform will have a public option ... in one form or another.

Harkin: It would be a public option. If the state wanted to opt out with a nonprofit co-op, then they would be allowed to do so. I'm not saying that's something I'm for, I just saying that's one of the ideas out there on the table that we will be looking at.

Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker opposes a public option in favor of more open market competition. Plus, he says the costs of current plans for healthcare reform are unacceptable.

Wicker: It is not an imaginary issue. This debt will eventually have to be paid.

Three leading Democratic Senators and White Houyse Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel will design the final Senate bill, and Harkin says it will get the 60 votes needed to pass this year.

Harkin: We'll go to conference, and I believe that we'll have a bill on the President's desk before Christmas.

Every member of the Senate will have a chance to offer amendments to the bill but Senator Wicker and others from both sides of the isle are calling for the final version of the bill to be made public before a final vote is taken.

Wicker: If the substance of the healthcare changes can wait until 2014 or 2015, the American people certainly have a right to see this bill for seventy-two hours before we begin to move toward passage.

The final legislation is expected to resemble more closely the version in the Senate, but House Democrats have been meeting for weeks on their version of the bill.