Sen. Harry Reid (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)
A panel of ten Democratic Senators, after negotiating all day and late into the night, has reached a tentative agreement to replace the direct government-run insurance plan, or "public option," with a private-insurance plan overseen by the federal human-resources agency and a lowering of the Medicare minimum age to 55.
The ten Senators, all selected by Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), gave few details. The next step is to submit their compromise proposal to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for a cost analysis.
The key element of the plan appears to be an abandonment of a scheme for a direct government-run insurance program, one that would compete directly with private insurance plans. Senator Joseph L. Lieberman (I-VT) has previously said that he cannot support that kind of plan, because he has had Senators tell him privately that such a plan is merely a stepping stone to a single-payer plan, like that in Canada or the UK, a thing he cannot support because it would create a financial drain that the country could never sustain.
Instead, the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would likely oversee a benefits plan, similar to that now offered to federal employees, but extended to ordinary citizens.
In exchange for agreeing to drop their public-option idea, liberals on the panel wrung a concession to lower the minimum age for Medicare to 55, beginning in 2011. Moderates refused to concede a similar expansion for Medicaid.
Former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT) praised the compromise, primarily on account of the Medicare expansion. On CBS' The Early Show, Dean said this:
[Medicare is already] a single payer run by the government. This moves things forward.
Other liberal commentators had expressed skepticism before the conferences began. Richard Kirsch, of the advocacy group Health Care for America Now (HCAN), said:
We need a public option that is a government entity, or established by government.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) apparently won another concession from the moderates: a requirement that all insurance companies spend 90% of their revenues to provide benefits.
The apparent abandonment of the public option will, of course, complicate any eventual reconciliation of the Senate bill with the House-passed bill, which includes the original public option favored by liberals everywhere.
Having the OPM manage any sort of insurance plan might present another complication, though most of the press aren't talking about it. The OPM was recently involved in a controversy involving an apparent plan to purge the civil service of all Republican political employees who had received their appointments within the preceding five years.
Previous articles:
Health care reform still might not pass the Senate
OPM will purge federal civil service of all Republicans
Epic healthcare reform battle in Senate
Two recent polls spell trouble for Obama health care reforms
Democrats struggle for 60 votes as Senate healthcare debate begins
Public option continues to divide Senate Democrats
Abortion, public option, price might stop healthcare reform
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