« Oh Dear: Cook Report Puts Likely Democratic Seats After 2010 Election at... 218 |
Main
|
Obama's Vow to Eliminate Earmarking From Budgets: B+
Set to Sign Porked-Up Omnibus Spending Bill With Price Tag of $447 B+
True Cost of Bill: $1.1 Trillion »
December 14, 2009
Fox Breaking: Tom Harkin Says Medicare Buy-In Scheme Now "DOB+"
Lieberman: And Now I Can Vote for "Reform"
Tipped by Intrepid.
I actually should have waited until I got confirmation but I tend to trust strangers on the internet posting under false names.
I give my reporting skills a "B+."
Link: TPM confirms the basic story.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) just walked walked into the Democrats all-important caucus meeting tonight sounding defeatest about the chance that a Medicare buy-in or public option trigger will survive Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) decision to block the compromises this weekend.
Asked by a reporter if the Medicare buy-in will be pulled out, Harkin said "looks that way," before praising a Democratic health care bill without the two public option compromises.
"There's enough good in this bill that even without those two, we gotta move," he said. "All the insurance reforms, all the stuff we wrote so hard for prevention and wellness in there, the workforce development issues that we have in there, the reimbursement based on quality not on quantity -- there's good stuff in this bill. It's a giant step forward, changing the paradigm of health care in America."
Confirmed: Major Garrett reports Harkin says the Reid Medicare Option is now out of ObamaCare.
More: Garrett also reports Lieberman can vote for the rest of the package, which is bad news, but not really new news, as he essentially already said he'd vote for the bill if it just contained the "subsidies" and restrictions on insurers.