This evening, during a hastily arranged press call with reporters, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) predicted that the final health reform package will include a public health insurance option. “The health care bill that is signed into law by the President will have a good strong public option,” Schumer said.

“We are going to be all about it,” Schumer told reporters on the call. Both senators rejected the bill’s current network of cooperatives and Sen. Olympia Snowe’s (R-ME) trigger compromise and promised to introduce amendments that would establish a national public option. “We are going to have a full blown debate in the Finance Committee,” “Don’t count it out,” Schumer said. “We are going to keep it in the center of the debate as the bill moves through Congress”:

SCHUMER: This is the starting gate. And we know it will get better and better as we move on. But having said that, we’re going to have a full blown debate in the Senate Finance Committee because the more people learn about the public option, the more they like it. And even though a public plan may be an underdog in the Senate Finance Committee, don’t count it out. We’re going to work really hard to get the public option going and started and keep it in the center of the debate as the bill, the health care bill moves through Congress….Tomorrow is the opening day in our big fight, but it is going to be a fight that goes down all the way to the wire. And I’d like to make a prediction. The health care bill that is signed into law by the President will have a good, strong, robust public option.

ROCKEFELLER: And I agree with that.

Listen:

Rockefeller insisted that “we have a good shot of getting it [the public option] out of the Finance Committee.” “A co-op is not an alternative, a co-op can’t work. The alternative is the status quo,” Rockefeller said. “Don’t rule it out. Don’t fall victim to this feeling that it’s not going to happen. You’re creating a problem for us if that’s the way you’re feeling.”

Rockefeller also praised the committee for passing Rockefeller Amendment D10, which established a MedPAC-like panel of medical professionals who “would be required to implement policies that successfully reduce cost growth in Medicare by at least 1.5 percent annually.” “We did something huge this afternoon in the Finance Committee and that was we passed a MedPac plan.” “Everybody said that there is no chance this could pass. It cannot pass. Well, it passed 15-3 this afternoon in the Senate Finance Committee. So I don’t take a dim view on what we’re able to do. That is a game changer, which is probably, in terms of policy, the largest game changer in health care so far.”

While both Schumer and Rockefeller dismissed the co-op and trigger alternatives as ineffective, it was unclear if Schumer and Rockefeller believed that they could pass a public option that linked the plan’s reimbursement rates to Medicare. A similar proposal was introduced in the House bill, but was later modified in a compromise with Blue Dog Democrats.

Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-MT) original mark of the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill used a modified community rating formula that allowed private insurers to charge older people five times more for coverage than younger people, a ratio that far exceeded the Kennedy and House bills’ 2:1 rating. On Tuesday the Chairman modified his mark with an amendment that lowered the rating to 4:1 and sparked a harsh response from the health insurance lobby.

In fact, today, in its second letter to the Chairman, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) President and CEO Karen Ignagni criticized Baucus — who is already requiring all Americans to purchase private health insurance — for improving the affordability measure. “If age bands are narrowed or “compressed” too much, premiums will rise significantly for these individuals, making coverage unaffordable, and resulting in a smaller and less stable pool, and higher premiums for everyone,” the letter warned:

The Mark’s original age band of 5:1 already reflects compression, relative to the natural distribution of underlying health care costs across age groups, and sets a balance whereby younger individuals are cross-subsidizing the cost of coverage for older Americans…For these reasons, we respectfully urge that you restore the age band to 5:1.

Ignagni and the health insurers support modified community rating and believe that in order for insurance pools to function, younger people must subsidize the costs of the sick. But insurers are apparently concerned that a 4:1 community rating would jeopardize the industry’s ability to attract a significant number of young people into high deductible policies outside of the exchange (in the remaining individual market). A 4:1 community rating would force insurers to charge younger people higher premiums and would presumably attract fewer enrollees; a 5:1 community rating would allow insurers to charge older people more and market more “affordable” (read: high deductible) policies to young and healthy applicants who pay more in premiums than they file in claims.

As former health insurance executive Wendell Potter explained in an interview with ThinkProress, insurers would “like to move us all into high deductible plans.” “[The would like to] have high deductibles that we would all have to meet and or [move us] into these limited benefit plans that are very skimpy and don’t cover you, don’t cover what you need. That way, when you do get sick, they’re not on the hook to pay you anything. They would love to have you enrolled in these.”

Watch it:

For more on ThinkProgress’ interview with Wendell Potter, click here, here, here, and here.

Throughout the mark-up process, Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee have continuously argued that replacing the over-payments to private plans participating in Medicare Advantage with a competitive bidding process, would cause the 10 million Americans who are enrolled in the program to lose the extra benefits some Advantage programs provide.

This morning, during a heated exchange with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), committee staffer Shawn Bishop explained that under the Committee’s bill, 10 million seniors “would not be losing the extra benefits they have today.” To the contrary, some Americans in low-cost states would actually gain benefits. By 2019, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 200,000 more Americans would be enrolled in Medicare Advantage coverage. But Hatch did not read that report:

HATCH: Here is the bottom line, will the 10 million people see a loss in their extra benefits? The answer to that of course is ‘yes.’ [...]

STAFFER: Categorically 10 million beneficiaries would not be losing the extra benefits they have today. Some would be gaining.[...]

HATCH: The fact of the matter is, the bottom line, is that these are 10 million people that are going to lose benefits. And that’s what it boils down to.

Hatch repeatedly dismissed the staffer’s explanations and insisted that all 10 million would lose their benefits. Watch it:

Bishop explained that under the legislation’s competitive bidding program — a process under which private insurers in each geographical area would bid to provide coverage to Medicare beneficiaries in a particular geographic area — Medicare Advantage plans that provide quality benefits efficiently, would receive a 5 percent bonus on top of their competitive bid to pay for extra benefits. Consequently, states with low costs, would be gaining benefits.

“So in low cost states, low fee-for-service states, today, the amount of extra benefits is very small. It’s minimal. Competitive bidding will allow good plans that coordinate care, that achieve quality rankings to earn up to 5 percent of the national average and that’s going to bring more extra benefits to low-cost states,” Bishop explained.

“So it’s not accurate Senator to say all 10 million beneficiaries are going to have less extra benefits than they do today. That’s not the case there’s going to be some with more, some with less,” she concluded.

Throughout the mark-up process, Hatch has filibustered amendments by peppering the staff with detailed queries and dismissing answers that departed from his ideology. On Tuesday, insisting that the individual mandate provision was unconstitutional, despite committee assurances to the contrary.