WANTED: A health insurance plan that seems to be government-run but is not actually government-run. Must make voters feel like they are getting the same V.I.P. treatment as United States senators and representatives (who by law are actually not supposed to get any real V.I.P. treatment). Must give beneficiaries a menu of choices while establishing strict standards for the benefits provided and maintaining premium costs within fairly tight limits.

That seems to be what a pivotal group of Senate Democrats are trying to find, as they seek a compromise on the divisive issue of a proposed government-run health insurance plan, or public option. So far, lawmakers have found that there is very little room for negotiating between the two sides in the debate.

Many senators are either for a government-run plan or against it. And insurance is either public, like Medicare and Medicaid; or private, like the employer-sponsored plans offered by major corporations and administered by companies like Blue Cross, Aetna, Wellpoint or UnitedHealthcare.

Or maybe not. After all, some hybrids already exist.

There are privately-administered Medicare Advantage plans, for instance. And many states have contracted with private insurers to help run their Medicaid programs. But neither of these hybrids are generally well-regarded. Medicare Advantage costs the government more than traditional Medicare. And so-called Medicaid managed care programs have an uneven record, with some getting high marks and others being sharply criticized.

One quasi-hybrid insurance plan, however, has long tantalized policy makers as a potential model for expanding insurance coverage, and in recent days Democratic negotiators have returned to it as perhaps the last best hope of a deal: the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, which provides insurance coverage to more than eight million federal workers, including members of Congress and their dependents.

A team of 10 senators, tapped by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, to fashion a last-ditch deal on the public option, is now focusing on the federal employees’ plan as a blueprint for a solution. The goal would be to provide a menu of private, nationwide insurance plans, and for the Office of Personnel Management to oversee them, conducting the same type of negotiation over benefits and premium prices that it does for federal workers.

The federal employees health plan offers federal workers an array of different private insurance plans, including fee-for-service plans, with preferred provider networks and lower cost HMOs. Several of the plans are national in scope – the most popular is a national Blue Cross plan – and benefits are portable, from state to state, and usually can be carried into retirement.

An easy-to-use Web site serves as a portal for federal employees looking to compare the plans available to them.

Although the plans are all private, the fact that the program is regulated by legislation, overseen by a federal agency, the Office of Personnel Management, and serves federal workers gives it the aura of public insurance even though it is not public insurance. And giving many Americans the same coverage as members of Congress is a politically potent – and appealing – concept for both lawmakers and the people they serve.

(The Team of 10 Democrats at work on this issue includes five liberals: Charles E. Schumer of New York; Tom Harkin of Iowa; John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia; Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. There are also five centrists: Ben Nelson of Nebraska; Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana; Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Thomas R. Carper of Delaware. An 11th, Joseph I. Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, was invited to take part but has not attended the meetings.)

Many Suggestions

Many readers of the Prescriptions blog have posted comments suggesting that members of Congress give up their health benefits until all of their constituents have insurance, or be forced to go on the public plan if one is created. (For years, some lawmakers, like Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, and Representative Steve Kagen, Democrat of Wisconsin, using the same reasoning, have actually refused their federal coverage.)

“How did we as a country, ever allow these clowns in office to have their own health care coverage??” a reader from South Carolina wrote in a recent e-mail. “They should have no more or less than what I have. PERIOD! They can always say that they didn’t vote for their own pay raises because it happens automatically. How long do they get to keep getting paid a salary along with benefits after leaving office???? We now have a political elite, whose ‘perks’ must cause old-time commissars in Russia to turn over in their graves with envy.”

In an August 2009 report, the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group highlighted the potential appeal of using the federal employees health plan — or the F.E.H.B.P. — as a model for a broader overhaul of the nation’s health insurance system.

“Politically, the program as a model for reform has appeal across the spectrum,” the report said in its introduction. “Conservatives like the program’s reliance on private health plans and market competition. Liberals like the prospect of expanding to everyone the F.E.H.B.P.’s large-employer-style benefits, community rating, and close oversight of insurer pricing.”

The report also contains some warnings about trying to expand the federal employees’ plan to the general public. “It does not seem to be wise simply to open the existing F.E.H.B.P. to non-federal enrollment nor feasible to precisely replicate the F.E.H.B.P. .and its national approach outside the context of federal employment,” the report said.

Political Risks

There would seem to be political dangers as well. The federal plans, on average, cover about 87 percent of the health costs of beneficiaries — a figure known as actuarial value, which represents how much of total health costs the plan is expected to pay across a standard population. That’s substantially better than the 70 percent actuarial value of the so-called “low-cost silver plans” proposed in the health care legislation that are expected to be the standard coverage for most people.

Moreover, the federal government, as an employer, typically pays 70 to 75 percent of premium costs with employees picking up the balance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, new federal subsidies to help moderate-income Americans buy insurance will cover 35 percent to 96 percent of premiums costs for families, depending on income level, and 13 percent to 94 percent of premium costs for individuals.

So, according to the budget office, a family of four, earning between 350 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $90,100 in 2016, when the legislation is fully in effect) would pay about 65 percent, or nearly $9,200, of a total annual premium of about $14,100. In other words, the legislation as currently written would require people at that income level to pay a higher percentage of premium costs, for less coverage than a government worker covered by the federal employees’ plan.

One feature that sets federal plan apart from many other employer-sponsored plans is that it requires plans to retain a percentage of premiums in a reserve fund to cushion against potential underestimating by actuaries of the plan’s expenses. The reserve funds have helped to soften the impact of premium increases. Still, premiums for the federal health plan have risen substantially in recent years, in line with other private plans. For 2010, the average annual premium will rise 8.8 percent. For the most popular national plan in the federal program, premiums will rise 12.4 percent for family coverage and 15.1 percent for individual coverage.

A 2002 report by the Government Accountability Office describes how the Office of Personnel Management negotiates benefits and premium prices without setting limits on the plan profits or specifically mandating the exact package of benefits in a given plan.

General Tso’s Impasse

The Team of 10 worked into Sunday evening over dinner of Chinese takeout, but called it quits before 8 p.m. without reaching an agreement. They are scheduled to meet again at 3 p.m. on Monday.

Some officials briefed on the discussions said that the proposal would likely include a fallback provision that would allow the Office of Personnel Management to create a government-run health plan if private insurers choose not to participate in the new program, a seemingly unlikely prospect.

The liberal senators who are the strongest supporters of a public plan were also said to be seeking additional tightening of regulations for the insurance industry as one condition of agreeing to any deal.

Some officials said that components of the proposed deal were modeled on other provisions in the legislation aimed at assisting small businesses in providing insurance to their employees. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, and Senator Blanche Lincoln, Democrat of Arkansas, were two of the foremost champions of those provisions on the Senate Finance Committee – and they are two senators who are being courted by the White House and the Democratic leadership.

Open Questions

Lots of questions remain about exactly what the proposal would look like and how it would differ, if at all, from the original core concept of the health care legislation, which is to create government-regulated insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, at the national or state level through which people can buy insurance.

The federal employees plan’s portal, like the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector, has always been viewed as a model for what the new insurance exchange would look like. The public option, if created, was expected to be one insurance plan on a wider menu of mostly private plans. Whether the Office of Personnel Management will do anything different from what the federal or state governments would have had to do anyway under the law is unclear.

And there is still a gaping divide between supporters and opponents of the public plan.

Senator Brown, of Ohio, who is participating in the negotiations, has said he has little interest in making further concessions on the public plan after moving from a public plan that would pay Medicare rates to a plan that would pay 5 percent to 10 percent above Medicare rates, to a public plan that would negotiate rates with health care providers and that states could opt out of by passing a law.

“We have compromised four times on the public option,” he said. “Many people wanted to do Medicare for all, but that was never in the cards here. Rockefeller and I wrote the original public option, where we had Medicare rates and Medicare network and then it was Medicare plus five. Then it was Medicare plus 10. Then it was no Medicare at all. Then it was the state opt-out. We have moved three or four or five times on this and those days are over.”

Mr. Brown added: “Why should four people decide that they don’t like the public option the way it is, when 50 plus of us like the public option the way it is?”

One of those four people, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, has called the public plan “an unnatural and dangerous appendage to health care reform.” After a meeting on Sunday between Senate Democrats and President Obama, Mr. Lieberman said he was thrilled that Mr. Obama did not once mention the public option and he said he was prepared to vote against the bill if the public plan was included.

Although Mr. Lieberman has chosen not to participate in the Team of 10 negotiations, to wrap up the debate Democrats will need the unanimous support of all 60 members of their caucus — including Mr. Lieberman — unless they are able to win over Republicans to make up for any Democratic defections. The centrist Republicans from Maine, Ms. Snowe and Susan Collins, are being courted by the White House but so far are not supporting the bill.

But if the goal is a health insurance plan that seems to be government-run but is not exactly government-run, a new program based on federal employees’ plan may be the elusive deal that lets Democrats move forward with their bill.