According to early documents and consistent reports, the health reform plan that the Senate Finance Committee is considering won’t have a public option at all. Rather, it’ll have some variant of Kent Conrad’s co-op compromise. The House plan, meanwhile, has a strong public option that can use Medicare’s bargaining power to negotiate low rates and a large provider networks. And Ted Kennedy’s HELP Committee, we learned today, will endorse the “level-playing field” public option, wherein the government’s insurer has no advantages over the private market.
via Ezra Klein – Economic and Domestic Policy, and Lots of It.
