By: Heather Pitre, WHF Health Reform Project Coordinator
Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has taken a lead role in drafting health reform legislation, and is working to bring both parties to the table to get his bill passed. He has some important Republican leaders on his side, and many believe that his role as lead of the Finance Committee will be the key to successfully passing reform legislation.
“I think I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” he said in an interview in his office. “Here I am representing Montana in the United States Senate. I am at the point to be able to do something really significant, really meaningful, and it must be done.”
President Obama continues to toughen his stance on health reform. “We are going to have some different rules for all insurance companies, one of them being that you . . . can’t cherry-pick and just take the healthiest people.” Health reform remains the overriding domestic priority for the Obama administration.
Obama is open to discarding the public plan to reach a compromise on passing reform. He suggested Tuesday that he was open to a program that does not include a government-run plan to compete with private insurers.
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