Yes We Can

On the day that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the consensus Senate healthcare bill will contain a public option (with a state opt-out provision), supported by statements from progressive Senators, the conservative Max Baucus and the White House, there's this report from Reuters:

"The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.

The U.S. healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.

"America's healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial," the report reads."

As for the opt-out provision, it doesn't hurt the principle (no individual mandate without public option) or very likely the practice. With the public option pretty popular now, and likely to be even more popular once it is working, it's going to be politically difficult for states to opt out, and will tend to marginalize the Rabid Right even more.

But key to that is getting the reforms working, and some Dems are looking to move up the date for the reforms to go into effect, from 2013 to next year.