While answering constituents’ phone calls on C-SPAN Tuesday morning, Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI) — who is a member of the influential House Budget Committee — bucked his party’s usual line on public health care entitlements by praising the idea of allowing Americans aged 55 and older to buy into the public Medicare program for seniors.

When the Wisconsin caller asked Ribble about the reform proposal — commonly referred to as a “Medicare buy-in” — for Americans between the ages of 55 and 64, Ribble complimented the idea and asserted that the U.S. must engage in a robust and similarly innovative debate over lowering health care costs:

CALLER: Good morning. For Medicare, why can’t instead of raising the age, let people buy in at 55, at $450 a month, and then go back to $100 [a month], approximately, at 65, and you would have more money put into Medicare, and it would help the small businesses that are insuring the older people?

RIBBLE: Hey Harold, that’s a great idea. Thank you for calling from Wisconsin, I hope it’s not snowing there today. Those are the types of ideas we need to get on the table and start talking about. We recognize that the Medicare program will continue to grow based on sheer demographics of the country aging. There are fewer workers replacing those that are retiring, and so there’s gonna be pressure put on these critical programs. And ideas like yours should have a hearing and voice in the halls of Congress, and I really appreciate you coming up with suggestions like these, because these are the types of debates that have to happen. Thank you for weighing in this morning.

The $450 per month the caller suggests that individuals between 55 and 64 buying into Medicare should pay is a monthly premium that would go towards funding Medicare Part B, which is the supplemental medical insurance that covers beneficiaries’ doctors’ fees, outpatient hospital visits, and various other non-prescription drug benefits. Under the caller’s plan, that premium would eventually be reduced to the standard Medicare Part B insurance premium for Medicare beneficiaries who are 65 and over, which is about $105 per month in 2013. Medicare Part A covers inpatient hospital stays, as well as hospice services and nursing care, and does not require the vast majority of seniors to pay any premium.

While the proposal is obviously just a rough sketch, it does represent a far more progressive vision for reforming entitlements and lowering health care spending than smokescreen strategies to shift costs onto consumers such as GOP proposals to raise the Medicare eligibility age — and it could substantially lower both older Americans’ premiums and employers’ health care cost obligations to their older workers.

Ribble’s apparent endorsement of the idea comes as a surprise, as he conspicuously states on his congressional website that he voted to repeal Obamacare and obstruct several of its funding measures — although he does admit to supporting certain reform elements in the landmark health law. Nonetheless, Ribble’s comments this morning set him apart from a significant swath of the Republican Party and conservative advocates of more “free-market” approaches to health care reform that curtail, rather than expand, public insurance pools like Medicare.

Last month, Republican leaders seized on C-SPAN’s request for full access into the Democrats’ health care talks to argue that capturing policy negotiations on camera would inform the public and improve the underlying legislation. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) accused Obama of breaking his campaign pledge and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) announced that “all House Republicans strongly endorse your proposal and stand ready to work with you to make it a reality.” “Hard-working families won’t stand for having the future of their health care decided behind closed doors,” Boehner wrote in a response letter.

The actual summit, however, turned out to be something less than substantive. Republicans used the existing reform legislation as props, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) criticized Obama for “allowing Democrats to run on” (saying Republicans had spoken for 24 minutes while Democrats had had 52), and McCain seemed to resort to his old campaign rhetoric. Both sides used familiar talking points and memorized phrases and at least five different Republicans asked Obama to “scrap the bill ” and “start over” with a “clean sheet of paper.”

In the days leading up to the forum (and in the hours following it), lawmakers expressed doubts about the usefulness of a 6-hour televised debate session and most concluded that the chances of a a new bipartisan agreement were remote. Suddenly, the very same Republicans who argued that televised meetings would cleanse the process or produce a more bipartisan bill quickly recognized that C-SPAN gave lawmakers just another opportunity to score political points without advancing the debate:

- “This week’s summit clearly has all the makings of a Democratic infomercial for continuing on a partisan course that relies on more backroom deals and parliamentary tricks to circumvent the will of the American people and jam through a massive government takeover of health care.” [Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), 2/22/2010]

- “This whole dog and pony show that we’re about to witness today is something that should have taken place a year ago when the administration first came in last February and laid out its agenda for health care.” [Michael Steele, 2/25/2010]

- “Unfortunately, my fears about this summit were realized: rather than a substantive discussion about health care reform, the President’s summit was just for show.” [Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), 2/26/2010]

- “I was discouraged by the outcome…I do not believe there will be any Republican support for this 2,700 page bill.” [Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 2/25/2010]

The ultimate verdict on the bipartisan health care summit is still out, but yesterday’s forum didn’t alter the debate or meet the expectations of C-SPAN advocates. It’s why I argued back in January that “the public should have ample opportunity to review the final product before the vote, but when it comes to legislating, transparency is overrated. Changing Washington’s political culture requires far deeper systematic reforms than C-SPAN television. The hard politics isn’t pretty enough for TV.”