So, quite a bit is being made about centrist senators, Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, being opposed to the Health Care Reform act as it is currently written. Particularly, they'res opposed to a government run option as an alternative to private Health Care firms. What they seem to overlook (in the articles I've read) is that Senator Lieberman is from Connecticut.
The reason that's meaningful is that the bulk of private healthcare/insurance providers in America are headquartered in Hartford... So, it's not so much a case of a centrist Senator being opposed to a "leftist, big government" proposal as it is he knows the hand that feeds him and doesn't want to bite it. Also, Ben Nelson is from Nebraska, home of Mutual of Omaha.
I'm not sure what possible objection you could have to a publicly-offered option (unless your campaigns are funded by private Insurance money). The argument states that a government-run option would undercut the competitive climate and make it difficult for healthcare companies to remain profitable. Balderdash... That's right - I said "balderdash."
If this were true, then government-run investment opportunities (and there are a few) would have destroyed competitiveness in the financial market. As you can tell, that hasn't happened. Instead, they offer low-risk, low-return opportunities to protect your assets and grow them slowly.
It's not even that I'm disappointed in senators Lieberman and Nelson, because I understand you need to represent your constituency and, like it or not, corporations need representation, too. I also understand that citizens work for those corporations and that advocating for the corporations is (on some abstract level) advocating for their citizen employees. What I'm disappointed in is that the media doesn't really explain the situation very well.
But, I guess "centrist" congressmen opposed to a controversial healthcare bill is a more exciting story than "Senators are beholden to the people that pay their campaign bills."