I had missed this broadcast of the Rachel Maddow Show on Friday with guest host Ezra Klein. But it was brought to my attention today and I think it's important for the people who think the Medicare eligibility age trial balloon is a figment of dirty hippie imaginations to see it.
Ezra is many things and one of them is well connected with the Obama administration. He's not a member of the conservative cabal, he's a member of the mainsteam political establishment. He didn't dream this up on his own (and neither did the rest of us who've been following this closely and could read the tea leaves.) And to his credit, he did take the time to spell out why this is a bad idea, which is more than others have done. But he says this very clearly in the following segment:
"The White House is open to it. They were open to it in 2011 and they're open to it now."
I also hadn't seen the clip of Pelosi wondering "what would happen" to the 65 and 66 year old seniors who would suddenly be cast into the expensive-for-old-people private market or drags on their employers (if they have them.) That's just silly, of course. Just like Durbin, she knows that the argument is for Obamacare to pick up the slack --- you remember, the health care program that is still under numerous legal challenges and where Republican Governors are rejecting the Medicaid expansion and refusing to create the exchanges. (Playing dumb on that is interesting. I can only wonder what it means beyond the fact that it's clearly part of the negotiations or they wouldn't have the same bizarrely uninformed talking point.)
In any case, I just wanted to point out that Ezra reported this as a real possibility, not just in the paper but on television as well. He's not the only one --- it's been all over TV this morning as well. It may be a trial balloon, it may be a false flag designed to misdirect the rubes while they hammer out something less obvious, but it isn't something that was just made up out of whole cloth.