Bipartisan Senate Gang Debating Scheme That Fails to Include Obama's Public Plan or Employer Mandates
Update: Quasi-Public Co-Op Scheme?

Obama, as has been noted widely, is willing to sign anything called "Health Care Reform," just as long as his ego gets its big win.

Which is sort of a problem. Because I really can't see these idiots doing anything helpful. Quite the opposite. So I'd rather Obama stood firm and vetoed anything that didn't contain his "transformative" system-destruction provisions.

The Democrats seem to be watering this down enough that it might end up getting passed. In all likelihood it will still be all kinds of bad. Just not all kinds of bad enough to prevent passage.

After weeks of secretive talks, a bipartisan group in the Senate edged closer Monday to a health care compromise that omits a requirement for businesses to offer coverage to their workers and lacks a government insurance option that President Barack Obama favors, according to numerous officials.

Like bills drafted by Democrats, the proposal under discussion by six members on the Senate Finance Committee would bar insurance companies from denying coverage to any applicant. Nor could insurers charge higher premiums on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

But it jettisons other core Democratic provisions in a reach for bipartisanship on an issue that has so far produced little.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Update: Allah has more details on the new plan.

I don't really get it myself -- supposedly the public option will be taken off the table, but put back on the table will be quasi-public co-ops -- "Fannie Meds," Allah calls them, government sponsored health-care enterprises -- which supposedly are some kind of Goldilocks solution (for soft statists, at least) of just the right blend of pretend capitalism and de facto socialism.

The left is saying Public Option or Nothing, leading Allah to muse:

It’ll be mighty interesting to watch the Democrats pitch this to the left as a de facto public plan while they’re pitching it to the right as anything but.

Seems to me more of the same. Politicians pushing this can't quite explain what it is, because they can't quite agree what it is, and that's largely because there are competing, irreconcilable goals here (cover everyone vs. reduce costs, maintain private system vs. singe payer) that being "reconciled" not through genuine compromise and trade-off, but by simply keeping things so vague no one -- not even the legislators involved -- can really say what the hell this is.

"Voting present," in other words. Refusing to take a clear, identifiable stand for one principle or another, instead pretending that all principles (especially the flat-out contradictory ones) are being honored, and hoping, I guess, that unelected bureaucrats work out the actual details that our representatives are supposed to have determined.

Would Obama Sign It? Allah disagrees with me that Obama would sign such a plan. Obama's pot-committed to public option, Allah thinks; it would be too damaging to reverse himself. The left would be too pissed off.

Well, maybe. But let JournoList conspirator and WaPo liberal Ezra Klein explain it to you: This is all about Trojan Horses, sneaking single-payer schemes in stealthily disguised as something else.

Understood that way, maybe the liberals would choke it down.

For now.

He admits right there the whole point is to hoodwink a reluctant public into "accepting" single payer by tricking them into thinking they've accepted something else.

Update: Quasi-Public Co-Op Scheme?&bodytext=Obama, as has been noted widely, is willing to sign anything called "Health Care Reform," just as long as his ego gets its big win. Which is sort of a problem. Because I really can't see these idiots doing anything...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 11:23 PM

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