WASHINGTON — The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said Tuesday night that he and a group of 10 Democratic senators had reached “a broad agreement” to resolve a dispute over a proposed government-run health insurance plan, which has posed the biggest obstacle to passage of sweeping health care legislation.
via www.nytimes.com
It appears from the scant details making the rounds this morning that this Senate is punting the public option down the field to some future Congress (and President) - while expanding the nation's current public healthcare system (namely Medicare) and enacting new regulations on private insurance. The White House calls the news of the "deal" between 10 Senators of the middle "great progress" but I'm not so sure. While it appears to improve what is un-ironically referred to as the "American healthcare system," the deal abandons true public healthcare under a Democratic President and Congress. Said Russ Feingold: "“I do not support proposals that would replace the public option in the bill with a purely private approach.” with the absence of Barack Obama in the jaw-boning on this issue - in my view, one of the poorest strategic decisions of this still-young Administration - a handful of Senators is batting around an increasingly frayed reform package that may in the end accomplish very little.
