WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Negotiators on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee worked to pare the costs and complete the details of a broad healthcare overhaul on Monday, with chairman Max Baucus saying he was still on track to produce a bill this week.
Baucus said the latest Congressional Budget Office report put the cost at $880 billion over 10 years, less than earlier estimates, and he still hopes to win Republican support for President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.
"We are working to bring this process to closure over the next week or so," Baucus told reporters after a session of the so-called "Gang of Six" negotiators -- three Republicans and three Democrats who have been meeting for months.
The negotiators are running out of time to reach agreement on the legislation, which is expected to form the backbone of any ultimate congressional compromise.Baucus said he still expected to make the bill public this week and that the committee would vote on it next week -- with or without Republican support.
Senator Olympia Snowe, one of three Republican negotiators and the focus of Democratic hopes for support, said she was not prepared yet to back the legislation. "We can't say that yet. We're still working through a number of issues and there are others remaining," she said.
Despite the President's nonsense about the GOP blocking him, the reality is the divisions withing the Democratic party that have been the main stumbling block, as detailed by Jay Cost, that battle is still waiting to be fought, via HA:
As of now, the conventional wisdom among the punditocracy is that the public option will be dropped as a way to pick up party moderates, under the assumption that the progressive caucus will go along for the ride. But will they? It is highly unlikely that all of them will. Most of them would presumably be willing to grant at least some small concessions to add votes - but how far are they willing to go? That depends upon individual legislators themselves, which means that - until you get to 218 in the House and 60/51 in the Senate - every concession the leadership makes had better add more moderates than it loses progressives. This is when legislative calculus begins to look like actual calculus!…
In general I am not sure how progressives are going to view any kind of compromise bill that attracts the moderates. Their attitude seems to be one of deep suspicion of the for-profit health industry. Take away the public option, but retain employer and/or individual mandates, and that looks like a big boon to the insurance companies. They might consider that an outright defeat. In that case, the normal calculations of compromise - you get half a loaf versus a whole loaf, but you’re still better off - would not apply. Progressives might think they have not gotten even half a loaf at all!
This points to one big problem with doing comprehensive reforms like this. Different factions have different diagnoses for what ails the system - and when a comprehensive bill is introduced, it inevitably favors one view over another. If the progressives’ view is on the losing end, they might think the bill does not do much of anything. And remember: the President wants to be the “last” to tackle this issue - meaning that the stakes are very high. So, if the progressives think the bill will further solidify the insurance industry’s hold over health care, they might bolt.
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