In Talking Points Memo, Brian Beutler suggests that the reconciliation process lends itself to a more Medicare-like version of the public option.

According to Martin Paone, a legislative expert who’s helping Democrats map out legislative strategy, a more robust public option–one that sets low prices, and provides cheap, subsidized insurance to low- and middle-class consumers–would have an easier time surviving the procedural demands of the so-called reconciliation process. However, he cautions that the cost of subsidies “will have to be offset and if [the health care plan] loses money beyond 2014…it will have to be sunsetted.”

Paone’s view parallels the Commonwealth Foundation’s findings, which we discussed last week.

Though I’m not a fan of the public option, it is useful to think of it as a means of disciplining heavily subsidized private insurers, an idea that I discussed in a column published yesterday. Harold Luft offers a better, more market-friendly means of accomplishing the same goal in his book Total Cure.