The robust public option apparently hasn't survived the drama that played out on the other side of the Hill this week, with a handful of moderates emboldened to act like moderates and water it down. The basics:
Members of the House Democratic leadership team offered these details of their bill, to be unveiled on Thursday. It would provide coverage to 35 million or 36 million people. The 10-year cost of expanding coverage would be less than the $900 billion ceiling suggested by President Obama. The cost would be offset by new taxes and by cutbacks in Medicare, so the bill would not increase the federal budget deficit in the next 10 years or in the decade after that.
The new bill, like an earlier version, retains a surtax on high-income people, but increases the thresholds. The tax would hit married couples with adjusted gross incomes exceeding $1 million a year and individuals over $500,000 — just three-tenths of 1 percent of all households, Democrats said....
The new House bill would expand Medicaid to cover childless adults, parents and others with incomes less than 150 percent of the poverty level, or $33,075 for a family of four. This goes beyond the earlier House bill and a companion measure in the Senate, which would extend Medicaid to people with incomes less than 133 percent of the poverty level ($29,327 for a family of four).
This change saves money. It is less expensive for the federal government to cover low-income people under Medicaid than to provide them with subsidies to buy private insurance.
Taxing the wealthy instead of so-called "Cadillac" health plans, often those plans negotiated by labor that trade off high wages for good coverage, is a key improvement in the House bill as opposed to the Senate bill, as is the Medicaid expansion More details as they come.
It's not clear, however, that progressives will be onboard:
"We were laughed at in August. Who would have thought that the Senate bill would have a public option?" said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Woolsey was noncommittal about whether progressives would accept the negotiated rates. "This is not walkaway time and it is not acceptance time," Woolsey said.
Members of the progressive caucus, along with lawmakers from the black and Hispanic caucuses, were scheduled to meet with Obama at the White House on Thursday, she said.
We don't yet know what the floor situation will be, what amendments if any will be allowed.
You can watch the announcement streamed on C-SPAN.
Update 1: No real news here. Closing the donut hole is good.
Update 2: Covering 96% of Americans is higher than the SFC version of the bill. We haven't seen yet where the combined Senate bill will be as details are being held until the CBO scores.
Update 3: The tea-bagger protest is pretty weak tea.
Update 4: The Ed and Labor Committee has a clearing house page for all things related to this bill, with more being added throughout the day, I'm told.
Update 5: The "real people" stories start. A nice touch.
Update 6: The bill text is here [pdf].
Update 7: What is so frustrating here is that the robust public option would have saved even more for the government, for all of us. Those "fiscally responsible" Blue Dogs spiked it.