“At the end of the day, there will be a public option in the bill,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) told reporters at an early morning briefing hosted by the Democratic Women’s Working Group and attended by The Wonk Room. Schakowsky predicted that the House would pass a public option and integrate the provision into the the final bill during conference. “I see momentum building,” she said.

Schakowsky pointed to a recent poll commissioned by Health Care for America Now of 91 conservative House swing districts — including many Blue Dog and rural ones — “which concluded that the public option has solid majority support among those voters.” According to the poll, “including a public option is essential to implementing an individual mandate. Voters also already prefer the implementation of a public option, and do not see a need for a trigger.” Greg Sargent has the details:

There’s over-whelming opposition to an individual mandate when the only choices are private insur-ance, but there’s net support for a mandate when people have the choice of a public option. And swing district voters are convinced private sector healthcare has failed to make health care affordable, and prefer the public option now rather than waiting on a trigger option.

Schakowsky said that she supported a ‘robust’ public plan that reimbursed providers a set percentage above Medicare rates, but could not guarantee that this reimbursement formula will be preserved in the final bill. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “a public plan based on Medicare rates would save $110 billion over 10 years,” $85 million more than a plan that independently negotiated with providers.

Conservatives argue that Medicare, which pays providers approximately 14 percent lower than private insurers, underpays providers and shifts costs to Americans with private coverage. The bills before Congress would provide bonus payments to primary care doctors and institute payment reforms that will begin rewarding medical providers for the quality of care they deliver rather than quantity.

This afternoon, while debating an amendment to prohibit the federal government from “defining the health care benefits offered through private insurance,” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) argued, “I don’t need maternity care, and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don’t need and will make the policy more expensive.”

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) interjected into Kyl’s remarks to remind him, “I think your mom probably did.” Watch it:

Kyl’s amendment would prohibit the government from defining which benefits should be included in a standard benefit package and would permit health insurance companies to design policies that exclude higher-cost beneficiaries. Currently, “it is difficult and costly for women to find health insurance that covers maternity care” in the individual health insurance market. According to a survey conducted by the National Women’s Law Center, the vast majority of individual market health insurance policies “do not cover maternity care at all. A limited number of insurers sell separate maternity coverage for an additional fee known as a ‘rider,’ but this supplemental coverage is often expensive and limited in scope.”

A well defined minimum benefits package would compel health insurers to provide basic services to all Americans. The Kyl amendment, which ultimately failed, would have allowed the industry to continue profiting from discriminatory practices. As former health insurance executive Wendell Potter explained in an interview with ThinkProress, insurers would like to move us all into “these limited benefit plans that are very skimpy and don’t cover you, don’t cover what you need. That way, when you do get sick, they’re not on the hook to pay you anything. They would love to have you enrolled in these.”

UPDATE: The Finance Committee announced that the public option debate will not take place today. Instead, it is scheduled to occur on Tuesday.

Today, the Senate Finance Committee will consider replacing the health bill’s network of cooperatives with a strong robust public health insurance option. As. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) explained yesterday, “tomorrow is the opening day in our big fight, but it is going to be a fight that goes down all the way to the wire. And I’d like to make a prediction. The health care bill that is signed into law by the President will have a good, strong, robust public option.”

As Ryan Grim points out, “the Senate and the conference committee between the two chambers” are now “the final battlegrounds for the public option. While several Senate Democrats have said they oppose it, no Senate Democrat has yet said publicly that he or she would oppose any bill that included a public option.” Here is the latest on the debate:

- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel doesn’t think the public option can pass the Senate:

ROSE: And it will not have a public option feature? EMANUEL: I’m not — that should be what the conference has to negotiate. But I don think — you know. ROSE: Can it pass with a public option feature? EMANUEL: I think the Senate’s been clear about what — the prospects there. That doesn’t mean in the House that they’re not going to come to the table and demand that…”

- Pelosi may push for a more robust public option in the House:

“Pelosi is planning to include a government-run “public option” in the House version of the healthcare bill. She wants to model it on Medicare, with providers getting reimbursed on a scale pegged to Medicare rates,” the Hill’s Mike Soraghan writes. The original House bill allowed the public option to reimburse providers at five percent above Medicare rates.

- A Medicare-like public option saves the most money:

In a bid to wrangle concessions from the Blue Dog Coalition on healthcare reform, House leaders Thursday released CBO estimates for liberals’ preferred version of the public option that show $85 billion more in savings than for the version the Blue Dogs prefer. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) a Blue Dog co-chair, said any possible new momentum toward a public option tethered to Medicare rates is, in part, ‘because of the cost issue’ and the updated CBO score.

- Blue Dogs don’t consider blocking public option a top priority:

The Blue Dogs have been surveying their membership over the last several days; coalition co-chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) has been collecting the responses. She listed the four top priorities that have emerged: Keeping the cost under $900 billion, not moving at a faster pace than the Senate, getting a 20-year cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office and addressing regional disparities in Medicare reimbursement rates. So, the Huffington Post asked, the public option is not a top priority? “Right, the group is somewhat split,” she said.

- The public still doesn’t understand the complexities of health reform, but they support the public option:

President Obama is confronting … an electorate confused and anxious about a health care overhaul as he prepares for pivotal battles … according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. … The poll found that an intense campaign by Mr. Obama to rally support behind his health care plan — including an address to Congress, a run of television interviews and rallies across the country — appears to have done little to allay concerns. Majorities of respondents said that they were confused about the health care argument and that Mr. Obama had not done a good job in explaining what he was trying to accomplish. … On one of the most contentious issues in the health care debate — whether to establish a government-run health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurers — nearly two-thirds of the country continues to favor the proposal, which is backed by Mr. Obama but has drawn intense fire from most Republicans and some moderate Democrats.”