Exclusive: Medicare buy-in attracting interest in the public option negotiations

[kpete]

Source: Washington Post


Exclusive: Medicare buy-in attracting interest in the public option negotiations

Sources who have been briefed on the negotiations say that Medicare buy-in is attracting the most interest. Expanding Medicaid is running into more problems, though there's some appeal because, unlike increasing subsidies, expanding Medicaid actually saves you money. There's also ongoing discussion about tightening regulations on insurers, but I don't know the precise menu of options being considered.

The negotiations are fluid right now, and there's nothing close to agreement. But there is interest, and everyone remains at the table. The broader point is that the public option compromise is increasingly becoming a health-care reform compromise, and the focus is returning, usefully, to the goals of the bill. That's good for both moderates and liberals, as everyone who votes for this bill has a stake in seeing it work, and the intense attention to the increasingly weakened public option had begun to distract from the need to improve other elements of the legislation.

Read more: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/exclusive_medicare_buy-in_attr.html

[Cassandra]

1. Yes, please!

[Cleita]

2. If there is a god, make it so.

It will help bring more money into Medicare, and not cost it more as a younger, healthier demography will be the buy ins.

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. This isn't going to happen.

I stand my prediction that there will be a trigger for a p.o. contingent upon a private non profit marketplace not materializing (for which there will also be a trigger).

[tsuki]

4. I predict that we are going to get a shit sandwich and all The Villagers

are going to stand around slapping each other on the back, complementing themselves on the wonderful job they did.

[Shagbark Hickory]

9. You can take that one to the bank. n/t

[pattmarty]

5. As this clusterfuck now stands, I am against the "bill"...................

.............The Medicare "buy in" sounds intriguing and could work. "Tightening regulations" should be a fucking no brainer, as this is something that should have been done 50 yrs ago. With REAL tough regulations and a REAL Medicare buy in, I could support this bill AGAIN and probably a lot of liberals would get enthused again also. This has taken way to long, and Obama has been a tepid supporter overall.

[Iowa]

8. +1

[old mark]

6. Do people in elected office in DC become stupid ? It is such an obvious

idea and it took them this long to think of it?

They spend too much time and effort stealing money, not enough on actual work.

mark

[cutlassmama]

7. True, but this would be "single payer" would it not?