Search

Washington (AP) – Urgently seeking a deal on President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, Democratic senators are considering temporarily opening the Medicare rolls to uninsured middle-aged people able to purchase the coverage.

The Medicare “buy-in” for people 55 to 64 would be available until government subsidies start flowing in 2014 to new health insurance markets designed for people who now have trouble getting and keeping affordable coverage.

Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said the idea is on the table as part of an emerging compromise under which liberals would back away from their demand for a new government health insurance plan to compete with private carriers. Instead of a so-called public plan, the compromise envisions private insurers operating under the auspices of the government agency that now manages the federal employee health plan – the same one that covers members of Congress.

The Democratic negotiators – five liberals and five moderates – are under pressure to reach a deal by Tuesday. The version now in the bill – a government-run plan that states could opt out of – is unacceptable to a handful of moderates whose votes Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., needs to pass a bill embodying Obama’s signature issue.

A companion idea also under discussion – expanding the Medicaid program to cover more low-income people – appears to have run into opposition from moderates.

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ridiculed the Democrats’ late-innings re-engineering, and suggested adding more people to Medicare could undermine the program’s already shaky finances. He called for Democrats to scrap the bill and start over.

Medicare now covers seniors 65 and older, as well as disabled people of any age. People in their mid-50s are among the most vulnerable to losing coverage, particularly in an economy where employers are still cutting jobs. But buying into Medicare would not be cheap. A current buy-in available to those 65 and older who don’t qualify because of work history costs about $550 a month.

Nelson said he isn’t sure how much help that would be, unless new government subsidies are included. But that would raise the cost of bill. “It’s always about money,” he said.

The latest public plan bears little resemblance to the original idea proposed by liberals, and embraced by Obama, during the 2008 presidential campaign. That called for the government to sell insurance to workers and their families in competition with industry giants like UnitedHealthcare.

But instead of Medicare-for-the-masses, it would be Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser Permanente, albeit with a government seal of approval from the department that handles the health plan for federal employees, including members of Congress. The Office of Personnel Management – OPM – would become an instantly recognizable federal acronym, like FDA and CDC.