Max Baucus and the "Public Plan"

For the new issue of dead-tree TIME, I have written this short profile of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a most unlikely figure to have emerged as the point man for health care reform in the Senate. (The print version also has a chart detailing the highlights of Baucus' own health reform proposal, which you can read about in detail in the White Paper that he produced last November.)

What didn't make the print edition story was a part of the interview in which I asked Baucus about one of the most controversial elements of both his plan and President Obama's--the so-called "public plan," a option in which people would have a chance to enroll in a Medicare-like publicly financed health system. The insurance companies hate this idea, saying it is would be unfair for them to be forced to compete with the government. Many health care experts, however, argue that this provision is crucial, as a means of holding down health care costs. (The idea being that the government would use its muscle--much as it does in the Medicare and Veterans Administration programs--to negotiate lower reimbursement rates.) Conservatives oppose it as well, because they see it as a first step toward a Canadian-style single-payer system.