Snowe's On Board

WASHINGTON -- After months of deliberation, it appears the Senate will consider a health care bill with bipartisan support. Sort of.
Tuesday, Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine, signaled her support for the Senate Finance Committee's version of health care reform. She's the only Republican who has supported any Democratic plans for health care reform. A final committee vote on the measure was expected Tuesday afternoon.
"When history calls, history calls," said Snowe in her remarks before the panel. She acknowledged that she has reservations about the bill, but that the "consequences of inaction" were too great to ignore. Her vote, she added, means simply that Congress will "continue working the process."
Does this mean the panel's version of health care reform will be what Americans get--or even that health care reform is a done deal? Hardly. However, Snowe's support is important for several reasons.
First, it allows Democrats to say that the health care overhaul that is emerging in the Senate has bipartisan support. (In practice, this is hardly true.) Second, it means Democrats will have to keep the more progressive wing of their party from pushing the debate too far to the left in the coming weeks. Snowe supports getting this bill to the next stage--not necessarily the final version of health care reform that will emerge from the Senate. Third, it affirms Snowe's power in this Congress. (She was also one of a few Republicans to support the $787 billion stimulus package last February.)
The Finance Committee's bill, which Snowe helped to draft, is expected to cost $829 billion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would levy heavy taxes on high-benefit insurance plans to help subsidize an expansion of health care. However, it would not include a government-run insurance option, which Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives support.
But now the most difficult stage of health care reform begins. Senate Democrats, knowing that the bill would pass the panel with or without Republican support, have already started blending the legislation with another health care bill passed this summer by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Once that process is complete, floor debate on the combined bill can start, giving lawmakers the chance to fatten it up with amendments before a final vote.
The House will engage in a similar process, though it has three different bills to blend into a combined version. Assuming both chambers pass their own versions of health care reform, a conference committee will meet to draft a final bill, which both the Senate and the House will have to pass before President Obama can sign it.
The road to reform is paved with land mines, many of them put there by lobbyists. The administration and congressional Democrats spent much time earlier this year cultivating alliances with drug makers, doctors, hospitals and trying to win over private insurers. In the next several weeks, keeping everyone at the table will be crucial. Monday, the private insurance lobby dropped a bomb on the Senate Finance Committee's bill, with a report saying that the reform would make insured families poorer by as much as $4,000 over the next decade. (See "The White House Vs. The White Paper.")
The bill survived that test, but there will be many more. Not of least importance will be winning over a skeptical American public, as lawmakers discovered during town hall meetings this summer.
Source forbes.com