Almost… There…

Posted on 10/22/2009 at 6:07 pm by Bob Cesca

It sounds like the Senate bill could have some form of a public option. And confirmation of this development is coming from strange sources: Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad. It’s vague, but telling.

I wouldn’t be surprised at this point if it was the opt-out public option. If it is, we can only hope that, in exchange for the opt-out, it’s a robust public option (Medicare Part E). If a robust public option from the Senate goes to conference with a robust public option from the House, we can almost break out the party favors.

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  • Dan in DE

    … and then we can sit back and ridicule all the pathetic wingnut racists as they rush to opt-in.

  • Eric

    I think the Blue Dogs are in the process of caving. They’re making these qualified nods in the direction of the public option at this point, but I think that’s a face-saving measure. If a full blown, robust option was in the final bill, I’m guessing they wouldn’t oppose it.Landrieu made similar ‘qualified’ noises yesterday. The one I worry about at this point is Lieberman.

  • ceu

    Opt-out is much, much better than opt-in as, I heard (anonymous, unnamed…ok, forgotten) someone say that the opt-out wouldn’t be available until the 2nd or 3rd year, by which time the people who are getting the public option are gonna scream bloody murder at any state officials who want to take it away from them.

  • DC

    It’ll be like the stimulus money. They’ll be several republican governors who will make noises about opting out, but when it comes down to counting votes in the state legislatures, they’ll opt in.

  • Rieux

    I find the person ceu is citing very hard to believe (if states can’t opt out until Year 2 or Year 3, that’s not much of an opt-out, and I can’t believe conservative Democrats would accept it). So, presuming that states can opt out immediately, what exactly is the downside to an opt-out public option?

    Well, one cost is obvious: you’ll have a bunch of poor people in Biloxi and Savannah and Cheyenne and Boise left without a meaningful insurance option for a while longer. That’s bad, unquestionably.

    But it’s hard to imagine that that’ll last very long. As the populations of red states see blue-staters getting terrific, cheap health insurance, it seems obvious that the pressure on red-state leaders to join the club will be enormous. Which is win-win, right? Either the Bobby Jindals of the world cave in to the public option, or their polities eat them alive.

    No?

  • munsell10yr

    stay on target…