Via Greg Sargent of The Plum Line, here’s video of Joe Lieberman in a Sep. 8, 2009 meeting with the Connecticut Post proposing to give people as young as 50 the "option to buy into Medicare early":
Transcript:
My proposals were to basically to expand the existing, successful public health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaid. In the case of Medicaid, to allow people who were above the eligibility level to buy into the Medicaid system, up to a certain income level, on the theory that they would buy into it at less than the market rate of health insurance. When it came to Medicare, I was very focused on a group post-50, maybe more like post-55 — people who had retired early or unfortunately been laid off early — who lose their health insurance and they’re too young to qualify for Medicare, and what I was proposing was that they have an option to buy into Medicare early. Again, on the premise that that would be less expensive than the enormous cost — if you’re 55, or 60, and you’re without health insurance, and you go in to try to buy it, because you’re older — although to me still young and vital — you’re rated as being a risk, so you pay a lot of money.
By now, everybody should realize that what Joe Lieberman says has nothing to do with principle -- it's all about exacting revenge on the Democratic Party base that voted him out of the party in 2006. Every single time he's flip-flopped on a position related to health care reform, he's done so in a fashion designed to cause maximal harm to Democratic Party leadership and the administration. The only kind of health care bill he wants to see pass is the kind of health care bill that will disappoint the Democratic Party base and depress Democratic turnout in 2010. Simply put, enabling Joe Lieberman is enabling a political opponent of the Democratic Party, and anyone who tries to make a deal with him is going to end up looking foolish in the end. At this point, it is increasingly apparent that the only option left is reconciliation. Joe Lieberman is leaving Democratic leadership no other choice.