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Baucus, Senator Max • bipartisanship is achieved by with health-care-reform bill hated on both sides of the aisle but, unsurprisingly, loved by the health-care industry that has given so much money to the campaigns...
...Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus is doing his best to keep his game face on. In an interview with TIME.com, he said the reaction he has gotten "feels like it's about right, because this is something that can pass ... It's a sense of inevitability that [the bill] is pretty close to the mark here." But after a stormy closed-door session with his fellow Finance Committee Democrats, Baucus is sounding open to making some changes, even before he bangs the gavel for his first formal drafting session on Sept...
...view probably has more than a grain of truth," he says. The chairman told TIME.com that he hopes to iron out some of those differences in the coming days. Specifically, Baucus is talking to Democratic members of his committee about addressing one of their chief complaints about the bill - that it won't do enough to make insurance affordable for the middle class. That's a crucial question, because the legislation would, for the first time, impose a requirement that virtually everyone have some kind of coverage or face a fine. Under Baucus' bill, the government would provide subsidies...
...Baucus expressed some flexibility with regard to his proposal to impose a 35% excise tax on insurers who sell "gold-plated" insurance policies - a levy insurance companies say they would be forced to pass on to their customers. Under the bill as it is currently written, that tax would kick in on plans that cost more than $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families. Health-policy experts say an excise tax could help curb health spending overall by discouraging the purchase of lavish plans that lead to overuse of the health-care system. The levy would also raise...
...bill's critics, however, say the taxes would probably be borne by many middle-income people, especially municipal employees and unionized workers in states where insurance costs are high. What's more, if health-insurance costs continue to rise as they have, the tax would catch more and more insurance plans. In the interview on Thursday evening, Sept. 17, Baucus sounded sympathetic to those kinds of concerns and hinted that the threshold for taxation is likely to be raised. "Union plans are very expensive, and we have to be respectful of that," Baucus said...