WASHINGTON — A plan to let people as young as 55 buy into Medicare, heralded as a breakthrough in the Senate’s health care debate, ran into resistance Sunday from lawmakers who can make or break Democrats’ efforts to reshape the nation’s health insurance system.
Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut declared the early Medicare buy-in a bad deal for taxpayers and the deficit. He pleaded with Democrats to start subtracting expensive proposals from the overhaul, saying: “We don’t need to keep adding onto the back of this horse or we’re going to break the horse’s back and get nothing done.”
Government accountants are poring over the latest compromise proposals to see how much they would cost, and some lawmakers are reserving judgment until that plays out this week. Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said she would “absolutely” vote against the package if it seemed destined to increase people’s out-of-pocket costs and the national debt.
In the meantime, only a few moderates have come out against the Medicare plan. But in a legislative struggle that is a game of inches, Democrats need all 60 votes in their caucus, and they don’t yet have them.
“I think it’s going to pass out of the Senate before Christmas,” President Barack Obama told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday night.
Lieberman said there was a chance, if Democrats “bring in some Republicans who are open-minded.”
But Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said no way: “With the American people as overwhelming opposed to this bill as they are, for the Democrats to basically arrogantly take the position that we’re going to ignore public opinion and jam this through before Christmas, I think that’s really a stretch.”
The early Medicare buy-in was part of a compromise reached last week when Senate Democrats dropped the idea of setting up a federal health insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Many Democrats who had favored that public option only grudgingly let it go, in return embracing the Medicare proposal as an appealing way to help people 55 to 64 — a group often vulnerable to losing employer-based health insurance when it’s needed the most.
Under the compromise, private plans overseen by the federal government would be offered in the marketplace.
