Marc Ambinder delivers a report that has the feel of a trial balloon:
This time, the President is going to be specific. Next week, President Obama is going to give Democrats a health care plan they can begin to sell.
He plans to list specific goals that any health insurance reform plan that arrives at his desk must achieve, according to Democratic strategists familiar with the plan.
Strikingly, despite the tough "deal-breaker" language, there still seems to be a ton of wiggle room on the public option:
He will insist upon a mechanism to cut costs and increase competition among insurance companies -- and perhaps will even specify a percentage rate -- and he will say that his preferred mechanism remains a government-subsidized public health insurance option, but he will remain agnostic about whether the plan must include a robust public option. Officials won't say whether the president intends to endorse a specific "trigger" mechanism if the competition mechanism fails, but they say he will make it clear that the final bill must contain language that increases competition.
Purely in political terms, if the White House's goal is to generate enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that sort of approach won't cut it. If they want to excite the base -- and as kos showed earlier, they need to -- then they will need to come out more strongly for a public option, because it is the only mechanism that anybody has proposed that will meet his stated objectives.
Update (4:50, by Jed) -- Remember that this sounds like a trial balloon, and it's not coming from named sources. Nothing is written in stone. President Obama hasn't said anything yet. If you don't like what you're hearing, the best thing to do is to let your voice be heard, whether at public events, phone calls to your senators and representatives, or whatever works best for you. Without your active involvement, AHIP could still win this thing.
