The Daily Open Thread For 9/1/09: TPMDC's Important Analysis Of Reconciliation In The Senate Health Care Bill

Kudos to Brian Beutler and the TPMDC staff

As Senate leaders begin work on a Democrat-only health care bill, they're finding themselves confronted with an unexpected irony: Though the caucus has reached an uneasy consensus around a public option that's modeled in many ways after a private insurer, it may be necessary to make the public option more liberal, and thus, more politically radioactive, if it's to overcome a number of unique procedural hurdles.

This is the needle Democrats may have to thread if they want a public option, and at the same time, want to bypass a Republican filibuster. And the key for them will be keeping conservative Democrats on board.

"A very robust public option that scores significant savings would presumably be easy to justify doing through reconciliation," says a Senate Democratic aide. "But it is still being studied whether other, more moderate versions of a public option could pass parliamentary muster."

It is a must read indeed. Will it bring a better bill if it happened?

David Waldman happily chimes in:

The basic premise is right, in that the clearer and more aggressive the plan is about scoring savings and limiting outlays by keeping prices down, the easier it is to get through reconciliation. But because we live on the other side of the looking glass, the more aggressive the plan is about saving money, the less comfortable conservative-leaning Democrats (who are "fiscally responsible," after all) will be in voting for it.

Fiscally responsible indeed they are, especially if they want to keep their insurance lobbyists money of course.

More to come.....stay tuned at here at TWD.