Senator Max Baucus will release a draft of the Finance Committee's health care tomorrow. This is in accordance with the schedule for the Finance Committee to mark-up, and likely vote on, the bill next week:
The Senate Finance Committee should have a draft of their health care reform bill tomorrow, chair Max Baucus (D-MT) said in a news conference today.
Baucus said markup hearings -- where the committee will discuss amendments and details -- will be held next week.
"We're on schedule," he said.
The bill will not include a public option. It will not even include a trigger. Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, who had been pushing the trigger for a while, has given up on the trigger herself:
But this morning on CBS's Face The Nation, Snowe suggested that a 'trigger' did not generate any bipartisan support. "It's not on the table and it won't be," in the final Senate Finance Committee bill, Snowe said. "We'll be using the co-op as an option at this point as a means for injecting competition in the process."
Snowe's Maine colleague, Susan Collins, explains that triggers have been dropped because they might have actually led to a public option:
"The problem with the trigger is that it just delays the public option, because the people who are going to be making the determination about whether the market is competitive enough want the public option. So I think the trigger is just a delay."
Well, at least Collins is being honest about it. Snowe had been saying that she opposed public options, but supported a trigger. The only way that would make sense is if she supported a trigger that would never fire.
Big PhRMA is going to spend $150 million in paid advertisements supporting the Baucus bill and its co-ops:
According to the New York Times, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America will spend $150 million specifically boosting for the health care reform proposal introduced last week by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT).
So, it appears that we are getting change Susan Collins and PhRMA can believe in.
No matter what happens in the Finance committee, it is essential that there is a vote on health care reform with a robust public option on the floor of the Senate. If Democratic Senators can keep saying that their aren't enough votes to pass a public option, and if they aren't going to include on in their health care "reform" package, then at the very least they should have the decency to tell us which Democratic Senators were actually opposed to the public option.
We are the activists who worked our asses off to give them their majority. If they are going to not deliver on the hopes and dreams we had that led us to do that activism on their behalf, then they better damn well tell us who canceled the delivery. No more of this code of silence crap that is designed to try and play both sides. They have to stand up, in public, and make it clear which side they are on--the American people's, or the private insurance companies. We need a Senate roll call vote.
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