The day after she ended months of speculation as to how she would vote on national health care reform legislation, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine said Wednesday she remains optimistic about building support for the historic measure among naysaying Republicans and cautious Democratic centrists.
And she reiterated her support for a modified government insurance program popularly referred to as the public option — with an important qualifier — it would be “triggered” only if insurance companies failed to make coverage affordable.
Citing a number of perceived flaws in the bill, Snowe nonetheless cast the sole Republican vote Tuesday in favor of the sweeping $829 billion, 10-year health reform bill in the Senate Finance Committee. The measure now must be merged with a more liberal and more costly bill from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee before facing a vote by the full Senate.
“I hope we can get broader support … as people become more familiar with the Finance Committee bill,” Snowe said Wednesday. Key to building that support, she said, is resisting efforts to incorporate more liberal elements, or raising the cost of the bill, as the measure goes forward toward floor debate. The final Senate bill, if it passes, then will be merged with parallel House legislation that also is more liberal and comes with a higher price tag than the Finance Committee measure.
Sen. Susan Collins, widely considered the most likely Senate Republican to join Snowe in supporting the health reform bill, issued a statement Wednesday morning outlining a number of concerns about the Finance Committee legislation.
“The legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee represents a substantial improvement over the costly and flawed alternative approved by the Senate Health Committee as well as the House bills,” Collins said in her statement.
But, she went on, the Finance Committee bill would hurt Medicare, raise costs for some individuals and businesses and not do enough to contain health care spending over time, among other problems.
“I share the goal of passing responsible health care reform and … I am hopeful that many improvements will continue to be made to produce a bill that can achieve bipartisan support,” Collins said.
Even her own support could erode, Snowe cautioned in remarks made as she cast her committee vote on Tuesday.
“My vote today is my vote today,” she said. “It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow.”
But in a nod to congressional Democrats and some Republican voters, Snowe said Wednesday that she still intends to introduce an amendment that would add to the final bill a “triggered public option”— a government health insurance program that would be available in states where private companies fail to meet affordability standards for low- and middle-income consumers.
Congressional Republicans argue that a public program would have an unfair competitive advantage over private companies and that it would have little incentive to perform efficiently and effectively. Snowe has voted with her GOP colleagues on the committee against several versions of an across-the-board public option, al-though the measure has strong support among voters in many states, including Maine.
A poll released Wednesday by the Pan Atlantic SMS Group showed that 57.4 percent of Mainers support a public option, 37.2 percent oppose it, and 5.5 percent are undecided.
Click here for the complete text of the poll.
Snowe on Wednesday said she understands that many Maine voters remain hopeful of a public program.
“I understand people’s desire to have the public option,” Snowe said. “They have been at the mercy of a merciless system.”
But, while government has an obligation to establish a safety net, Snowe said, she concurs with more conservative Republicans that the private insurance industry, properly reformed and regulated, is in a better overall position to offer both price relief and more meaningful coverage.
The Finance Committee bill would eliminate a number of industry practices such as dropping coverage or raising premiums when a policyholder is ill, capping benefits and more. It would also promote competition by allowing insurers to operate across state lines and through a system of insurance “exchanges” where consumers could comparison shop for coverage.
“It’s all going to change,” Snowe said. The provisions currently in the bill will hold insurers accountable, she said.
In addition, the trigger Snowe still hopes to incorporate would make a government-sponsored public option immediately available in states where insurers fail to offer affordable plans.
“If they fail to perform, there will be the leverage of the trigger,” she said.
Snowe said an eleventh-hour report issued Monday by the industry group America’s Health Insurance Plans claiming that the legislation would drive premium rates up instead of down was “absurd” and built on faulty and incomplete data.
Private insurers “stand to gain $500 billion in tax credits and subsidies, and 29 million new customers,” Snowe said. “It is extremely absurd and preposterous to think that they would be somehow disadvantaged.”
Snowe said health care reform ranks in its importance and historic significance with the creation of Social Security in 1935, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the creation of Medicare in 1965, all of which garnered significant bipartisan support.
“If something passes on health care, it will be a landmark piece of legislation, for sure,” she said. And if it doesn’t, she added, “we will have a crisis on our hands.”
An estimated 125,000 Mainers lacked health care coverage in 2008, according to a recent report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The liberal-leaning nonprofit organization Families USA on Wednesday released a report showing that an additional 13,200 Maine people lost health insurance coverage in 2009 due to job loss.
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