On Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)--a senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee--made his frustrations with the state of health reform negotiations public. "I don't think I could say with a straight face that this (co-op proposal) is at all close to a nationwide public option," he told the Associated Press. "Right now, this co-op idea doesn't come close to satisfying anyone who wants a public plan."

Schumer has been a key negotiator on the committee, seeking compromise between conservative and liberal Democrats on the inclusion of a public insurance option in the committee's forthcoming reform legislation. Last week, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND)--also of the Finance Committee--said he thought the idea was dead in the water; that it couldn't win Republican support and that Democrats should throw in their lot with the idea of creating a co-op system instead. That, though, would alienate liberals, and might also fail to entice Republicans to support the entire package, and as a result, Schumer said, Democrats might have to go it alone on the public option.

Now Conrad is changing his tune--at least somewhat. He's still pushing the co-op model, but one with comparable levels of clout to a government-run public plan: "I believe to be effective there has to a national entity with state affiliates and those affiliates have to have the ability to regionalize," Conrad told reporters. "I think [Schumer's] concern there can be addressed."

[Schumer] believes there needs to be national purchasing power. I think that's a good point that the national entity would be able to do purchasing on behalf of the state and regional affiliates and on behalf of the national entity itself.

Note, that's not enough to satisfy public plan advocates, who view the development as a promising shift in both momentum and rhetoric, but an inadequate policy. Expectations that the Finance Committee will ultimately sign off on public plan worth supporting are fairly low--but there are two other proposals working their way through Congress, too, and inasmuch as Conrad has moved the center of the greater conversation to the left, it's welcome news to reformers.