Reports are just coming in that there’s a new “deal” on health care reform. President Lieberman wants only to give U.S. taxpayer money to big insurance companies but doesn’t care anything about lowering costs. Do you know the origin of the Medicare buy-in? Joe Lieberman. Joe Lieberman proposed a Medicare buy-in compromise as late as 3 months ago. It doesn’t matter though. Liberals expressed cautious support of the idea so Lieberman had to tank the deal (his ego is still mad about 2006). Ezra Klein discusses how the Romneycare is working in Massachusetts, since it looks like that’s what we’ll be getting. Hey, we’ll probably get Olympia Snowe too, so it will be a tri-partisan bill!
Moments ago, Democratic Senators told reporters that the caucus yielded to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) demands and dropped the Medicare buy-in provision from the Senate health care bill, leaving only a network of nonprofits to stand in for the public health insurance option. While Senators stressed that a final decision would be made tomorrow, after the Democratic caucus meets with President Obama, most agreed that the fate of the Medicare buy-in was all but certain.
“The general consensus was that we shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good and if we’re going to get all the insurance reforms accomplished and a number of other things [and] dropping the Medicare expansion was necessary, well then that’s what should be done and it appeared that would be necessary to get the 60 votes,” Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) told the Hill. “At some point you have to switch from the sentiment, the emotion of the words, to the facts,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). “And then you’ve got to decide if I didn’t get what I want, in the form that I wanted it, am I willing to cashier 31 million Americans? I want a bill.”