Medicare Flip is a Flop

Now that Joe Lieberman has flip-flopped, it appears the Senate's new compromise health care reform bill will not include a "Medicare buy-in" for 55 to 64-year-olds. That's too bad, because it was one of the few parts of the bill that actually made sense.

Look at it this way. If you were running an insurance company for people aged 65 and over, what would be the one guaranteed way to lower the average cost for each insured? Simple, get some younger, healthier people into the pool.

And conversely, if you were tasked with insuring all adults aged 18 to 64, what would be the one sure-fire way to lower their premiums? Easy, get the older people out of your pool.

Add this to the fact that the 55 and up group are the ones that are losing their jobs, and their insurance along with it, and you had a perfectly simple way to reform health care.