A group of ten senators, five progressives and five moderates, is attempting to come up with a compromise health care reform bill that could be acceptable to the Democrats, and gain their full backing for major change.
The idea is to allow people to buy into Medicare at age 55, instead of 65, bringing millions more into that program, and to allow the Office of Personnel Management to offer alternative programs of health care to other Americans, as they do now to federal employees.
The ten senators involved include progressives Tom Harkin of Iowa, Chuck Schumer of New York, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The five moderates include Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, David Pryor of Arkansas, and Tom Carper of Delaware.
This new development is a promising possible alternative that would allow health care reform and avoid the controversial “pubic option” opposed by some of the moderates and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who also is thought to be a possible part of this new initiative.
Whether this idea of the “Gang of Ten” bears fruit should be known in a very short time, and may produce progress in the ongoing Senate debate that has been occurring day after day, including on the weekend, in the US Senate!