Balking at Baucus Bill?

Another piece of legislation is hitting congress (PDF), this time it is the Senate Finance committee chairs attempt. This bill was painstakingly put together, with bi partisan input. One thing is clear, even tho significant concessions were made to the GOP, including a fiscally neutral bill with no public option, no member of the minority party is on board. See, the Right, regardless of what they say, simply don't want anything to succeed for fear of becoming even more politically irrelevant. Fortunately, there are enough grown-ups involved in the process that reform will happen, only its form is still in transition.

On the surface you even have the Left discouraged about the lack of a public option, but the bill does include a competitive option calling for non-profit health care cooperatives to be created. However, industry leaders don't seem to be opening up their knee jerk fireworks on this particular proposal. A WaPo analysis points out:

But behind the rhetorical fireworks was a sense that the fragile coalition of major industry leaders and interest groups central to refashioning the nation's $2.5 trillion health-care system remains intact. As they scoured the 223-page document, many of the most influential players found elements to dislike, but not necessarily reasons to kill the effort. Most enticing was the prospect of 30 million new customers.

Although the House GOP has released an 'outline' of what they would like reform to look like, no one on the Right has release anything specific. If they want to continue to claim they support reform, they are going to need to come out with something more than 'Just Say No' campaign style rhetoric.

CNN has a nice comparison chart of the various proposals. Take a peek!

For me, I am beginning to see feature from the various proposal that I like. As one who has been lukewarm to a public option, am curious to learn more about the Baucus non-profit health care cooperative plan.

Flash