After telling Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) to put a public option in his health care bill, and strip it of a financing provision that would tax employer-provided health care benefits, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to assure Republicans that he wasn’t abandoning bipartisanship. Now, Baucus is saying much the same.
“Everything’s on the table,” was Baucus’ mantra yesterday. “By far the better approach is a bipartisan approach to get this moving.”
These are palliative words, but they don’t seem to have changed momentum on the Hill. Most indications suggest two key provisions that were recently expected to be included in the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill–health care co-operatives and the benefits tax–are on life support. That pleases reformers, but also makes them nervous. They abhor the co-op model–preferring a public insurance plan instead–and though their feelings about taxing benefits are mixed, they see no reason to ignite controversy when there are plenty of other, more-popular ways to finance reform. But at the same time, Finance is now way, way behind schedule, and there are precious few days left for them to complete work on a bill, merge it with the HELP Committee’s bill, debate the final product on the floor, and bring it to a vote.
