I just caught up with Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and asked him about a new idea floating around the Hill that would give states the choice to opt out of a national public option. Just, how nascent is the idea?

Here's what he said: "I've heard about it, I've not seen one...I was in a group like this somebody talking to somebody else, kind of raising it."

Does it sound like something that you could support?

"Honestly, I just don't know enough about it," he said.

However--and it's hard to tell whether this is an important "however"--Conrad said he thought a separate proposal to let states opt in to a public option had a lot of promise. And he had fulsome praise for it's author. "Senator Carper, you know he's a very thoughtful member. And Senator Carper is also somebody that listens very carefully....he laid out a possible compromise. That seemed to me to have some promise to it."

Well, Carper and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) seem very much in the lead on the opt-out idea--so Conrad's praise could be telling.

"I give Senator Carper a lot of credit. He listens. Then he fashions a proposal based on what he hears from colleagues. That's a real good way to do things."

When the proposal's more fleshed out, Conrad's position will be telling. Though he voted against two public option amendments in the Senate Finance Committee, he didn't rule out coming around eventually. He criticized fairly strongly the idea of tying the public option to Medicare, on the grounds that North Dakota has some of the lowest reimbursement rates in the country. But he had kinder words for Schumer's "level playing field" public option. The opt-out proposal seems, at least in theory, to give North Dakota a way around the public option if the state government happens to agree with its senior Senator.

And, as yet another data point, Conrad voted for an amendment by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) to let state governments bargain with private insurers to bring down the price of premiums for low income residents.