It’s also slightly dishonest — the FEHBP doesn’t offer a Medicare buy-in, and the Medicare buy-in is intended to keep costs down by forcing insurance companies to be honest.

BTW, this is the perfect example of why the GOP should have cut a deal with Obama in June ’09. In Congress the only strong constituency for cost control is in the GOP.

But the GOP wouldn’t deal, so Obama has to rely on progressives (who see cost-controls largely as a necessary evil), and irrational moderates. As Progressives saw the public option as their main goal, the moderates opposed it, and a potential $1p00 billion savings died.

The right can whine when the other cost controls die if it wants. But everybody who knows this stuff knows that if they really wanted those cost controls all they had to do was tell the tea-partiers to go jump in August.