The Senate Finance Committee has at last passed its version of healthcare reform, with the help of lone Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME). Now it’s the job of Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to merge it with the HELP bill, which unlike the SFC offering includes a public option. Notes The Kiplinger Letter:
Reid must find a middle ground between liberals who insist the plan include a public option and conservatives whose constituents can’t abide one. He has to appease liberals who want health coverage for more of the uninsured, with plenty of help to make it affordable, while persuading fiscal conservatives that the reform plan won’t become another drain on the already sky-high deficit….If Reid can’t pull it off, the repercussions for him will be huge.
That is if Reid tries to merge the bills at all. An interesting piece in The Wonk Room suggests that a better strategy from a liberal point of view is to “exclude the public plan from the Senate bill and add it during conference…when they reconcile the House and Senate bills.”
I still think the SFC bill is pretty much what reform will ultimately look like this time around, but you never know.
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