It is about enough of who won what prize and who wants to own a NFL team…there is far more important issues that need analysis……
Since single payer was a NO SHOW in the deliberations and the public option will most likely be in name only….what options are being considered now? Glad you asked….and this one is a doosey (sp?)…….
As reported in the Huffington Post:
Senate Democrats have begun discussions on a compromise approach to health care reform that would establish a robust, national public option for insurance coverage but give individual states the right to opt out of the program.
How such a system would work is still being debated, according to those with knowledge of the proposal. But theoretically, the “opt-out” approach would start with everyone having access to a public plan. What kind of public plan isn’t yet clear. States would then have the right to vote — either by referendum, legislature, or simply a gubernatorial decree — to make the option unavailable in their health care exchanges.
A simple thought experiment might clarify the issues at hand: What if Medicare had been passed with this ‘opt-out’ provision? To make the thought experiment more appropriate to the situation at hand, we must imagine that the 1965 law creating Medicare had already been subject to the same compromises that the public option has been: that its ability to negotiate with certain suppliers and providers has been negotiated away, and that instead of being available to all older Americans, access has been restricted so that only an estimated 5% of them are expected to join.
A plausible answer is that a number of states, especially in the South, would have chosen not to participate.
This appears to be a weak lame attempt to pacify as many Dems as possible with the chance that a 60 vote super majority can to reached……in other words, it is all about the vote not what is best for the people, who those voting have taken an oath to serve….did I miss something? Is that not grounds to throw the ilk out of office?