Sen. Baucus Marks Out Turf on Health Care Reform

Written by: Nick Curabba

Wasting little time to begin the debate over health care reform, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chair of the Senate Finance Committee wrote to President-Elect Barack Obama just two days after the November 4 election to announce a forthcoming plan to "move forward on health care reform in the early days" of the next Congress. Sen. Baucus revealed little in the way of details about his plan in his letter to the  President-Elect, but did outline five key principles that are, in his words, "essential to successful reform."

Those key principles are:

(1) achievement of universal coverage utilizing a mix of public and private solutions;

(2) use of pooling arrangements that will supplement (replace?) the employer-based system and the individual market, neither of which does Sen. Baucus believe can provide "affordable, portable, quality coverage";

(3) realization of cost controls by manipulating the tax code and searching for efficiencies elsewhere in the health care market;

(4) emphasis on illness prevention as a way to avoid "needless suffering and the high costs of treating" a preventable sickness; and

(5) ensuring that individuals, employers, and government all play a part in "creating and funding" a new system of delivering health care.

The full details of the plan are expected to be released this week, and action on legislation will likely begin as soon as the 111th Congress convenes in January 2009.