I'm kind of wondering the same thing. The important thing is the details: at what age will people be allowed to buy into Medicare, how much will it cost, and will there be subsidies for lower income people.

But you know what? If the terms of the agreement are reasonable and it expands Medicare, I don't really care how we got there. A good result is a good result.

sometimes, especially in a democracy, its good to let people work their way around to what you want, rather than insisting on it endlessly.

because the republicans so hate the public option, they have paintd themselves as the lifetime lovers of medicare.

if medicare expansion is now seen as the alternative to the public option, it would be very difficult for republicans to turn around and say they dont want that either.

for those believers in the obama is playing chess theory, it could be that the public option was offered up as the sacrificial lamb in order to pave the way for medicare for all.

Strategy, that's why.

I've been thinking that Obama should have just signed an executive order allowing those people who don't have insurance to be able to buy medicare at cost. Who could stop and why?

Since there are a million procedural votes between bringing this up and implementing it, bringing up something good early only serves to help reactionaries organize against it early.

The best time to bring something up would be right before conference because the bill that comes out of conference is THE bill that faces real votes for enactment.

I recall Churchill's discussions concerning the funding of Dreadnought warships: "one party wanted 4 built, the other wanted 6, in the end we compromised at 8." (Paraphrased from memory). Of course that 8 helped put the British in position to bottle up the German fleet in 1914-1918.