A group of moderate and conservative Democratic senators is trying to negotiate an alternative to the public option, which appears to have used up its nine lives (at least for purposes of the Senate debate). Of all the ideas floating around, I’m partial to the Medicare buy-in proposal. It would lower the Medicare minimum age to 55, which would allow millions of Americans to buy into comprehensive health coverage at affordable prices. Of course, I’d like the threshold to be even lower, but this policy change would set the stage for future expansions. Most surveys find that Medicare enrollees are highly satisfied with the care they receive. Assuming that Medicare proves equally popular with the expansion population, it would be difficult for politicians to ignore future calls to make it available to even more people, particularly if private insurers fail to keep their offerings affordable. We could end up, over time, getting the public option that is encountering so much resistance right now.
Nobody knows what a final compromise will look like, but progressives need to demonstrate that this bill will not be a complete capitulation to private insurers.
