This Is Clever

From The Wall Street Journal:

The White House is holding intensive talks with Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican, about Ms. Snowe's proposal to use the public plan as a fallback option, aides familiar with the conversations said.

The overhaul under discussion would include a requirement for most individuals to buy insurance; a federally operated exchange where individuals and small businesses could buy insurance; and tax credits to help people buy plans. Ms. Snowe believes that is enough to create a competitive market that drives down prices.

But if prices don't fall by a certain percentage and coverage doesn't expand beyond 95% in a given state after a time, the plan would call for adding a government insurance option to that state's choices, according to the aides familiar with the White House conversations. "We are at the point now to give it the full throttle to get it over the finish line," Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, said in an interview. "That is why the president is going to step into a different role and be more prescriptive."

Nice idea there, Ms. Snowe. And Obama is smart to embrace it, because he can push this public plan fallback idea as an example of where a Republican is actually trying to come up with a solution instead of trying to block reform and thus hand Obama a political defeat.