The Republicans have more than once admitted they are not going to vote for any health insurance bill and did so again on Wed. The WH is evidently aware of this (how could they not be).

In August, MSNBC's John Harwood mentioned something to Paul Krugman that stood out for me: "I gotta tell you what a White House official told me today: 'Our problem right now is, if we tell some of the Republican opponents in the Senate, 'You can have everything you want in the bill,' they still won't vote for it.'"

Senate Republican leader made clear on Wednesday that his party, despite all its griping over the public health insurance option, abortion-funding or health care for illegal immigrants, is simply and flatly opposed to the "core" of the Democratic health care reform proposal.

Satisfying every Republican demand short of scrapping the entire project, said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would still not capture GOP support.

link

Carper's proposal is, in some ways, more conservative than the "trigger" option offered by Snowe.

Under Snowe's proposal, a new national nonprofit corporation would offer insurance in any states where affordable coverage was not widely available from private insurers. Federal officials would serve on the corporation's board, but it would not be part of the Health and Human Services Department.

Carper's proposal would leave decisions and solutions up to the states. While Snowe's amendment sets only an affordability test for the trigger, Carper would allow states to opt-in if affordable insurance is not widely available or the insurance market is dominated by only one or two players. link

It sounds like Carper's plan is a trigger, but a trigger that, once pulled, requires each state legislature to then act. If the state legislature acts it must then choose from three basically worthless options, a state-based public option, co-ops, or some kind of managed government partnership with private insurance companies.

If this is the case, then Carper has the dubious distinction of coming up with the worst "alternative" to the public option so far. A trigger for co-ops. This idea is so bad, it makes Conrad's worthless state-based co-ops look robust. FDL

Obama went into this without a plan or even a desire  to steer the debate. He's let the momentum slip away and now we're faced with all these different plans that only help corporate American, when the original concept was to help the people.

If democrats pass any of these bills as is with no limits on how much premiums can rise they are going to get nailed and nailed badly.  Though of course it won't affect the "precious one" because it won't even start until 2013. And that is already going to be a problem for the 2010 and 2012 elections because how much fun are democrats going to have explaining to people who are going to expect subsidies  right away that oh sorry you have to wait until 2013. Are these guys really this stupid?

This is, I think, half right. The public option stuff has been left for the leadership. The Senate Finance Committee doesn't have the credibility to broker the relevant compromise here, in part because few of its members are trusted by liberals. Rather, the merger between the Finance Committee's eventual bill and the legislation produced by Tom Harkin's liberal HELP Committee will be the venue for that deal. The HELP folks have the credibility to bargain for liberals and Baucus can represent centrists.

That sounds like the Senate would come out with a bill with a weak public option.  Then that would be merged with one of the House bills, resulting in a strong than the Senate public option but possibly not a robust public option (which would be ideal).

My back up plan would be as follows.

• Drop mandates without a public option.

• Require insurance companies to accept patients with preexisting conditions.

• Put a cap on the premiums insurance companies can charge.

He's dodged,mumbled, stated  the public option was not necessarily...er, uh,...and while his vagueness has offered him political cover, it hasn't done a thing to bring about meaningful HC reform legislation a step forward.

This Baucus crap is an insult giveaway to big pharma and insurance. It delivers more victims to the healthcare industry without any safegards, and literally subsidizes the rape of the American public.

The Baucu Healthcare scenario played out in the Senate is an abomination and a profound insult. Obama is gadding about as President of Chicago along with Oprah, and we still haven't heard exactly what he wants in  a HC bill. He's wimped out so far.

Hopefully I'm wrong and Obama will get off TV and spend sometime at  showing his sincerity about a PO.  What also gets me going is how Obama struck a private [?] deal with bigPharma and Insurance industry back some months ago.  Were we consulted? Do we know about his Faustian bargain?
Do we know how come he went behind our backs and struck "a deal"?  It's absurdly cynical.