Did You Know...

Hell if I know if the public option is really dead or not. As usual, there’s no concrete language for the public to see. Only public press conferences alluding to vague backroom door agreements. Safe bet: The public option is a Democrat policy toe fungus that may disappear temporarily, but will come back with a vengeance later.

So yes, be on guard. The price of dropping public option now seems to be yet more massive government health care expansions. The only guarantee here is more generational theft to feed the entitlement beast. Cha-ching:

After days of secret talks, Senate Democrats tentatively agreed Tuesday night to drop a full-blown government-run insurance option from sweeping health care legislation, several officials said, a concession to party moderates whose votes are critical to passage of President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

In its place, officials said Democrats had tentatively settled on a private insurance arrangement to be supervised by the federal agency that oversees the system through which lawmakers purchase coverage, with the possibility of greater government involvement if needed to ensure consumers of sufficient choices in coverage.

Additionally, the emerging agreement calls for Medicare to be opened to uninsured Americans beginning at age 55, a significant expansion of the large government health care program that currently serves the 65-and-over population.

At a hastily called evening news conference in the Capitol, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., declined to provide details of what he described as a “broad agreement” between liberals and moderates on an issue that has plagued Democrats’ efforts to pass health care legislation from the outset.

With it, he added with a smile, the end is in sight for passage of the legislation that Congress has labored over for months.

The officials who described the details of the closed-door negotiations did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss them publicly. Several officials stressed that so far, Democrats had technically agreed only on submitting proposals to the Congressional Budget Office for their impact on the bill’s cost and other analysis.

And then there’s this:

Reid said reports the government-run “public option” had been dropped were “not true.”

Peek-a-boo!

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Related: No surprise here. The Senate defeated Ben Nelson’s amendment banning Demcare abortion funding…and he’s backing down on his filibuster threat.

All talk, no maverick action.