The long awaited bill from U.S. Senator Max Baucus, who is the chairman of the all-powerful Senate Finance Committee today, released his health insurance and health care reform bill.
Since the bill became available, there has already been tons of commentary on it. Not surprisingly, reactions are all over the map — and mostly drawn on party lines.
Republicans are no happier — in fact, not even Senator Olympia Snowe pitched in support for the Baucus bill. Most look at Senator Snowe as the only chance for a jump-ship Republican to vote for health reform.
One bright light for Democrats, however, is that the Blue Dogs have indicated they would support Baucus’ plan.
The White House also weighed in, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs calling the Montana Senator’s plan an “important building block. ”
It’s truly still is a building block as Gibbs described because we will definitely see this bill kicked around, scrutinized and changed many times.
This will surely be the focus of the health insurance/health care reform conversation for the coming days and weeks.
Once we absorb this bill a bit, we’ll be back to provide more analysis.
We’re also tweeting about these things as we can, so feel free to also follow Go Health Insurance on Twitter.
If you’d like to read the bill, The New York Times did a nice job splicing it up in an interactive tool. Click here to view the bill. Also, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of the bill. See what the CBO had to say here.