The following podcast contains explicit language.

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GabFest listeners can download a free audiobook by signing up for an Audible membership at Audiblepodcast.com slash gabfest. Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for the 11th of December. I'm John Dickerson in Washington with Emily Bazelon, who's here with us today, and David Plotz and the cast of 98 other people in the room here today with us. Today we're going to talk about health. It's our intern Amman's last day. It's our intern Amman's last day. Great job. We'll miss you. Farewell. And I had a drink in your honor over lunch by myself. Which added... So not only you're drinking, you're drinking alone. Yeah. Hmm. Which added to the other drinks that she had with breakfast.

But our first topic will be about health care.

The Senate bill continues to plot along.

Our second topic will be about the president's speech in Oslo, Norway, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

And our third topic will be about something that David will explain once we get there.

It has to do with Tiger Woods and technology and a barn just outside of Maryland.

David, health care, weigh in.

We hear something's happening with it.

Yeah, you've been reading about it this week.

It's made it's kind of slow and winding way through the Senate. There is a compromise brewing on the tricky question of the public option, although it's still very much up in the air because for a variety of reasons we can get into. But David. Well, as you say, it is like the mighty Mississippi rolling slowly towards the sea. I mean, there's the outlines of a compromise in the Senate with Senate Democrats allegedly

having a framework which would involve no public option, but a variety of kind of soaps

to the public option people, notably the ability of 55 to 64-year-olds to buy into Medicare, and then the requirement

of the creation of a bunch of private nonprofit health plans, which would mirror the health

plans that are offered to members of Congress and that everyone would be able to buy into those.

And if those didn't work, then at some point they might trigger a public health option.

I think the appeal of this latter thing where you have congressional health plans available,

everyone is the idea is, well, it's good enough for members of Congress.

It'll be good enough for the American people.

People are likely to groove with that.

The problem with it is it's complicated and it also has a trigger for a public option, which Joe Lieberman, who is one of the key votes, Joe Lieberman says he will not vote for something that has a public option or a trigger in it. So who knows? I suspect, you know, they're going to gradually limp their way to a bill and hopefully before the end of the year.

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