Howard Dean sees the political (and immediate) benefits of a public-option-plus*:
{Dean} also warned that the public option may hurt Democrats politically next year. “If the Democrats want to hold on to their majority, you’re going to have a problem,” he said. That’s because the public option wouldn’t be up and running until 2013, long after the 2010 elections, meaning voters won’t really see any benefits until long after the election.
To address that problem, Dean said Democrats need to do something that will have tangible results by next summer. His proposal: opening up Medicare to people over the age of 50 so that a “certain mass” of people will already have benefited from health reform by the elections. “You need to have people sign up for this program by July 2010,” Dean said.
Why not make it kids and Medicaid instead? Under 13, or 18? If you lose your job, your kids don’t lose their health care. And if you have an employee base full of parents w/ lots of dependents, you just saved some money.
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Medicaid is state-run, so it’s extremely sensitive to recessions and often underfunded. Also, it pays less than private insurance (even less than Medicare), so some providers don’t accept it.
Also kids,and sometimes their younger/poorer parents don’t vote as much as people between the age of 50 and 65.