Having written an editorial on the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen for yesterday’s Washington Post, Sarah Palin couldn’t very well pen another critique of health care. But, Palin-style knee-jerk conclusions still found their way into today’s op-ed section.

In its editorial about the Senate’s public option compromise and the Medicare-buy in for Americans between the age of 55 and 64, the paper concludes that “the last-minute introduction of this idea within the broader context of health reform raises numerous questions, not least of which is whether this proposal is a far more dramatic step toward a single-payer system than lawmakers on either side realize”:

Once 55-year-olds are in, they are not likely to be kicked out, and the pressure will be on to expand the program to make more people eligible. The irony of this late-breaking Medicare proposal is that it could be a bigger step toward a single-payer system than the milquetoast public option plans rejected by Senate moderates as too disruptive of the private market.

But the irony is just the opposite: despite heated rhetoric about the public option and a government takeover of health care, health care reform would actually expand private coverage and reverse the current trend of Americans losing private insurance.

According to the latest Census, as the rate of uninsured Americans balloons, the number of people with individual coverage and employer-sponsored private coverage is decreasing. Between 2007 and 2008, the percentage of Americans enrolled in all private insurance decreased from 67.5% to 66.7%, and that number is expected to fall even further without reform. The Senate health bill will move a large number of the uninsured population into a private plan within the state-based exchanges. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that approximately 18 million uninsured Americans would enroll in private insurance. It may be the greatest expansion of private coverage in the nation’s history!

Of course, the Senate bill is not without its public components like Medicaid and now Medicare expansion. But past analysis of Medicare expansion proposals estimate that the plan would not undermine the private health care system. The proposal could attract roughly 3-4 million new enrollees, on par with the CBO’s estimates for how many Americans would enroll in an opt-out public option. And under that scenario, the CBO concluded that the government’s commitment to health care expenditures would remain roughly the same.

The number of Medicare enrollees could certainly grow over time, but the theory behind inserting a public component into health care reform has always relied on competition, not dominance. It’s the idea that private insurers can compliment the public health system and that each sector can use its inherent advantages to lower costs, improve the delivery of care, and expand coverage. It’s the yeong – yang, the push and the pull and the understanding that private health insurers are not entitled to new customers. They have to earn them by providing quality care more efficiently.

But, the Washington Post can actually see single-payer from its editorial headquarters. It’s gone rogue.

When the Senate voted to proceed with debate on the health care reform bill, Republicans urged their colleagues to oppose the motion. The minority argued that it did not have 60 votes to change the bill and urged Democrats to “scrap” the current bill and “start over,” framing an ‘aye’ vote on the motion as a vote for higher premiums, Medicare cuts, and “government spending. Ultimately, not a single Republican voted to begin debating the health care bill. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) even claimed that “the American are going to be surprised at the time that we waste when we could be solving jobs and the economy, which is their biggest concern at the present time.”

But today, Republicans took to the floor to urge Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) — who announced yesterday that Senate may adjourn for the weekend — to continue “wasting” time on the health care debate:

- SEN BOB CORKER (R-TN): “I hope to be with you all weekend, discussing with you amendments that are important, voting on those amendments — I can’t imagine a better place for all of us to be.”

- SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): “We need to stay in, we need to know what the proposals are, we need to have votes on it and we need to tell the American people what’s going on behind closed doors.”

- SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): “We need to be here, and more importantly than being here, equally important than being here, is to vote…we must stay here and do it and we’re prepared to be here and vote.”

Watch a juxtaposition:

Republicans also demanded that the Senate move to voting on more amendments and expressed outrage at not being included in the public option negotiations negotiations. Being ‘out of the loop’, however, didn’t stop the GOP from criticizing the proposal. Republicans dismissed the proposed Medicare-expansion as just another entitlement expansion that would bankrupt the government.

Since Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) unveiled the merged Senate bill, Republican Senators argued that the legislation was too long. “It’s a massive increase in government, as shown by this bill,” Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) told reporters, “spreading his arms wide as if to encompass the stack of papers more than a foot tall.”

Throughout the debate, “Republicans have rotated three other copies of the bill among their desks so a giant stack is never more than a desk or two away from any senator who wants to thump it, poke it or heft it for viewers to see.” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) even dropped to bill on his desk, to demonstrate how loudly it fell.

But today, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) opened the 11th day of Senate debate by arguing that the Senate bill was not long enough:

And we talk about 2,074 pages, which seem like a lot, and it would be for a normal bill that you could debate in a limited period of time, which is what we’re being asked to do. But 2,074 pages isn’t nearly enough to cover health care for America. So why is it only 2,074 pages?

Watch it:

Enzi went on to argue that the bill ceded too much authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, suggesting that Congress should define the details of certain provisions and make the bill even longer.