It looks like both the Medicare buy-in and the public option are dead:
After a meeting among Senate Democrats today, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh said it looked like the proposed Medicare expansion would be dropped. “The general consensus was that we shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the
good and in order to get all the insurance reforms accomplished and a number of other good things in the bill,” dropping the Medicare expansion “would be necessary to get the 60 votes,” Bayh told reporters.
Earlier, two top proponents of the public option, Senators Jay Rockefeller and Tom Harkin, said they would be willing to give up the public option to win passage. Harkin said he’d also be willing to forgo the Medicare expansion. The senators’ statements suggested a deal might be close. Harkin, an Iowa senator and chairman of the Senate health committee, and Rockefeller of West Virginia both said it was time to focus on what needed to be done to get a bill passed.
“This bill, without public option, without Medicare buy-in, is a giant step forward toward transforming American health care,” said Harkin. “That’s reality, there is enough good stuff in that bill that we should move ahead with it.”
Apparently CNN confirms this. So in the space of a few days we seem to have gone from more than I expected to less than I expected. I always figured we’d at least be able to get a public option trigger included, but if this report is right we’re not even getting that. Sic transit etc.
