Senate Democrats largely embraced a compromise that dropped a "public option" from healthcare legislation, setting aside their concerns about aspects of the consensus plan in the hopes that the deal would serve as a rallying point in their push for the passage of reforms, the Washington Post reports. But industry groups representing doctors and hospitals attacked one of the alternatives in the deal, designed to take the place of a proposed government-run insurance program. They argued that a plan to allow uninsured individuals as young as 55 to buy into Medicare would be financially untenable and would jeopardize access to healthcare services for millions of Americans.
