December 9th, 2009

Philadelphia Inq reports:

WASHINGTON – After agreeing tentatively to jettison a key liberal priority , a full-blown government-run insurance option , Democrats say they are getting close to pushing President Barack Obama’s health care bill through the Senate.

“We’ve overcome a real problem that we had,” Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in announcing what he called a “broad agreement” Tuesday night.

Officials said it included nonprofit national health plans administered by the Office of Personnel Management, which runs the popular federal employees’ health plan, as well as opening Medicare to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, effective in 2011.

Greater government involvement would potentially kick in if private insurance companies declined to participate in the nationwide plan, although details weren’t available. One possibility was for the personnel office to set up a government-run plan, either national in scope or on a state-by-state basis.

“I think when people see this they’ll really like what we’ve done,” said Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who was among five moderate senators who spent several days negotiating with five liberals. Reid planned to describe the plan in greater detail after getting an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

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