WaPo: “Legislative Sausage” Health Care Plan Could Lead to Single-Payer Insurance

Mike Brownfield /

Today’s Washington Post editorial page takes a critical look at Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) latest “compromise” health care bill, which it describes as 11th-hour “legislative sausage” that was “made on the fly” and includes ideas dating “at least to the Clinton administration.”

Most significantly, though, the Washington Post sees Sen. Reid’s bill as a “dramatic step” toward a single-payer health care system, even if the public option is not on the table:

[T]he last-minute introduction of this idea within the broader context of health reform raises numerous questions — not least of which is whether this proposal is a far more dramatic step toward a single-payer system than lawmakers on either side realize.

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