Medicare for everyone is a public option

Say hello to “Medicare Part E” — as in, “Medicare for Everyone.”

House Democrats are looking at re-branding the public health insurance option as Medicare, an established government healthcare program that is better known than the public option.
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“One of his concerns is that people don’t know what a public option is. Medicare is a public option,” Schadl said. He said Oberstar started talking about “Medicare for Everyone” during August town hall meetings.

The yellow triangle represents the sort of "Zone of Compromise". I'm pretty sure that a co-ops provision, with immediate implementation, could pass the Senate (or at least not be filibustered by it). Likewise with Olympia Snowe's trigger. A strong-ish opt-in amendment proposed by Maria Cantwell was approved by the Senate Finance Committee along party lines, but did not get Snowe's vote; it might or might not pass the full Senate.

Basically, any square that is overlapped by the triangle seems like a plausible outcome. The most robust public option available is probably a federally-run program that states would have the right to opt out of and which would have to negotiate its rates in the market. The worst-case scenario is probably state level programs with an extremely stingy trigger, as proposed by Snowe. (This is assuming, of course, that health care reform as a whole will pass, which people may be a little bit too sanguine about.)