The Senate Finance Committee voted on Tuesday to approve legislation that would reshape the American health care system and provide subsidies to help millions of people buy insurance, as Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, joined all 13 Democrats on the panel in support of the landmark bill. The vote was 14 to 9, with all of the other Republicans opposed. Democrats, including President Obama, had courted Ms. Snowe’s vote, hoping that she would break with the Republican Party leadership and provide at least a veneer of bipartisanship to the bill, which Mr. Obama has declared his top domestic priority. Ms. Snowe was a main author of the bill but she had never committed to voting for it.
But shortly after 1 p.m., she announced that she was on board, in a speech that silenced the packed committee room and riveted colleagues on both sides of the dais. “Is this bill all that I would want?” Ms. Snowe asked. “Far from it. Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls. And I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time.”
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I can't believe they watered down the health care bill just to get one meaningless vote from a Republican. No one sees this as a bipartisan bill, why not just push through some real health care reform? The country didn't give the democrats overwhelming majorities in the house and senate along with the white house so they could "work" with the same non-compromising hacks that had been previously running the show. Why can't we get more dems like this guy?
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this isn't what happened. baucus' bill was stripped of the public option because baucus is a fairly conservative dem, as are a couple other democrats on the finance committee. so, when they voted on the bills with the public option a couple weeks ago they got voted down (because of blue dog democrats). since the PO has been snowe's main point of opposition, she voted for the bill along with all the democratic members of the finance committee who were also opposed to the public option.
essentially, health care has been a shit show because of blue dog democrats, not republicans.
I know conservative Dems had essentially killed the public option a long time ago. I still feel like they could have pushed something better than this through though.
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