Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told MSNBC this afternoon that President Obama "wants to come in hard" on health care reform now that the Senate Finance Committee has voted on their version of the bill.

Rockefeller said he spoke with the President today. MSNBC anchor Ed Schultz challenged him, asking why Obama spoke so highly of the Finance Committee's bill, when it doesn't include a public option.

"He's the President, you gotta cut him some slack. He's an inside player," Rockefeller said. "Don't worry about that. He wants the public option. He wants MedPAC. ... Now that the Finance Committee is finally out of the way we can move on."

Rockefeller sits on the committee and proposed a public option, but it was voted down.

The senator also said the study released this week by America's Health Insurance Plans "increase[s] the chances of getting a public option."

"The insurance industry did us an enormous favor by completely turning their backs on the entire health reform bill, which they had been pretending to support," he said. "It, in fact, shows their greed."

On Sen. Olympia Snowe, the only Republican to support the Finance bill, Rockefeller said she was "absolutely right" to say she doesn't know how she'll vote on future iterations of the bill.

"We're walking into a whirlwind here" as Congress works to merge the various bills into one, he said.