Notepad

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, a potentially critical moderate Democratic vote for health care legislation, is predicting that the Senate will pass health care legislation this year, but without a public option.

"The public option is only one of hundreds of issues concerned with health care reform," he told the Lakeland Ledger. "Public option means different things to different people. Some people think of it as socialized medicine, but that type is not and has not ever been considered."

Nonetheless, the former Florida insurance commissioner argued that a government option is not in the cards. "Still any public option will not pass," he said.

But he told a class at Summerlin Academy, a publicly funded institution run like a military school, that some manner of health care overhaul would become law.