Hey, if it's good for the goose:
“I think it’s important that we show we mean it, we believe in it, that it works for the public and we’re willing to put our own families on it,” Mr. Brown said. “This says we have to go on the public option. I think they are right.”
If the Senate scraps the public option in favor of an exceedingly limited and expensive buy-in to Medicare for those 55-64 and this new OPM-negotiated plan, I say it's time to rework the Coburn amendment. If there's no public option to require Members to join, then they should be forced to sign up with the least generous insurance policy offered through the new OPM-like exchange.
This is, after all, the "backstop" for the rest of us? If the new OPM-negotiated plans are truly anything like the FEHBP policies (and not, say, "junk insurance" with 60% actuarial coverage) then surely they couldn't mind this proposal? If the OPM will be sufficiently adept at regulating these "non-profit" insurers (who are part of the same private insurance industry that has failed us for decades), then surely it's no problem that these plans will be "nationwide" (i.e. not subject to state regulation). Surely the subsidies set forth in this bill will be generous enough to provide them coverage (I'm even willing to give them the most generous subsidy set forth in the bill, as this is employer-provided coverage, after all, and not an entitlement program).
What do you think? Coburn/Vitter for the new OPM plan? Does anyone think this has the slightest chance of happening?
Update: Some people may be confused about the new "OPM plan", since the White House and some in the Senate are trying to spin this as congressional health care for all, or FEHBP for the rest of us. It's nothing of the sort:
The OPM has a captive customer base for the FEHB program. Because it has so many potential customers it can make some demands of the insurance companies as a prerequisite for access to the program. This new OPM exchange would not have a captive customer base. It would have nothing to offer the insurers, so it would have little power to make demands. The private insurance companies will still have access to all the same customers through the new state-based exchanges or outside the exchanges. Until the OPM exchange can make demands of the private insurance companies, it can’t offer slightly lower premiums, and if it can’t offer slightly lower premiums, it will not attract enough people to give it the negotiating power it needs to lower premiums.
Basically, this is NOT FEHBP for the rest of us, but a completely different exchange that will negotiate different plans with none of the pricing power it gets from having millions of federal employees to offer these insurers (i.e. it has no "captive market"). It's a fig leaf unless federal employees are also part of the exchange.
If that's not possible, we might as well guarantee some captive market for this new OPM health ghetto: 535 Members of Congress. Who's with me?