Keep Trying: Senate Health Bill Contains Many of The Most Divisive Elements of the House Version

It's hard to imagine a bigger mess could be made of health care reform than the nearly 1,200-page bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Sen. Max Baucus' version, at 200 pages, is shorter at least. But it is no more acceptable to a broad constituency.

Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, produced a bill with many of the same objectionable features as the House package. The Baucus plan is uniting a similar opposition coalition of Republicans, conservative Democrats who think it's too big and liberal Democrats who think it's too small.

The Senate bill ignores President Barack Obama's opening promise to deliver health care reform that does not add to the pocketbook costs of American households or to the budget deficit. Baucus would fund expanded coverage with a series of taxes on drugs and medical devices, and an excise tax on the richest health insurance policies. These taxes would be passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices.

Baucus promises to pay the $856 billion tab by cutting Medicare spending, cuts that will be offset, he says, by trimming waste from the program.

But if those efficiencies don't come, the reduction in Medicare funding will result in either reduced services or lowered payments to doctors and hospitals. Private insurers and their policyholders will have to make up the difference, as they do now.

Employers would be forced to participate or pay a fine. The fines proposed may be lower than the cost of providing employee insurance coverage, incentivizing employers to shift workers into government sponsored plans and breaking another Obama promise — those satisfied with their current coverage can keep it.

Baucus replaces the unpopular public option with a network of government-sponsored co-ops that would work much the same way.

This Democrat-only bill brings Congress no closer to delivering reform that accomplishes the three basic goals of covering the uninsured, providing security for those with existing plans and containing the runaway costs of the health care system, all in a package that doesn't divide the nation.

Both the House and Senate should continue working toward these goals.

The auto industry is about to embark on another experiment in forced technological change — at a time when Detroit carmakers are still financially wobbly.

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