The Bangor Daily News also leans right. Both Snowe and Collins are from the Second District, the northern half of the state which is more conservative than those crazy libs who live in Portland and the surrounding suburbs.

If a "city" of a hundred thousand can be said to have suburbs. But it is the biggest city in the state.

Snowe is clearly the better of the two Maine senators. She's smarter, more articulate, and more moderate than Susan Collins. And I think she does really care about health care.

I have a libertarian friend in Mass. who told me the exact same thing. While he would prefer to see the private sector collaborate on it, he thinks a government-run health care system may be the only way to get the job done.

And he voted for Ron Paul.

prefer to see the private sector collaborate

So, she prefers monopolistic collusion over free market competition?

Can't have it both ways, honey.

It would be nice if Snowe actually supported health care for the entire population. However, being Republican, her morals, ethics and independent thinking have been put away in a lock box. The RNC leadership will tell her how to vote. The lemmings need to all run over the same cliff.

Two bits says Snowe goes all Arlen Spector on this; sounds good for now, but wait for crunch time. She will find something that "forces" her end up in opposition.

What I believe differentiates Snowe & Collins from going 'Spector' on health care will be if there is overwhelming support for government run health care in the state of Maine.

Spector has always been a self promoting windbag who ends up toeing the rethug line. Snowe & Collins are self promoting windbags who will end up voting in such a way that will not get them dis-elected.

Maine is currently working toward a single payer system itself is it not?

She's smarter, more articulate, and more moderate than Susan Collins.

I am holding a head of cabbage that is smarter, more articulate, and more moderate than Susan Collins.

[Holds cabbage]

Anybody who really understands insurance markets knows that insurance "reform" is not only incredibly difficult, but that, even if achievable, it will not achieve other important goals, like meeting cost and quality objectives, and just doing better to ensure that only treatments reasonably likely to be effective are being covered and paid for.

I think single payer is unrealistic at this point in time, however, "Medicare for all" will hold the feet of both the provider and insurance sectors to the fire -- they will have to start cooperating and stop pointing fingers at each other in order to compete with a government plan. If providers want more reimbursement than Medicare allows, they will start having to give up the notion that they can provide lots of useless stuff and still get paid. On the other hand, if insurers want to continue they will have prove their efficiency and their ability to actually add value to the system, and not just pick risks well. Some insurers actually have amazing data, but they can't really use it because providers simply don't want to be part of a system, but want more or less complete autonomy. As far as I'm concerned if autonomy is their goal, they can get paid less for it.

I am so f'ing tired of both of them.

From where I sit the main opposition to at least a partial public option is not republicans or the population at large but rather certain segments of democratic party leadership.

btw: the argument (which came complete with sloganeering about govt bureaucrats and socialism) i heard from some of that segment is that the problem with health care right now is that 1) insurance companies (who they call health care providers) currently unfairly bear all the risk 2) americans want too much health care 3) health care is currently a good bargain and 4) doctors should be making more money.

it sounded clear to me that they just want to institute Mass. style everyone must buy health insurance "reform". we need to hold democrats feet to the fire, the moderate republicans will come around if a sound plan is put together.

Note that the post says "if" in "If Democrats are going to need some Republican votes to pass a major health care reform initiative..."

They may not need any Republicans. They may not need to make the bill do far less good to get Republicans, because it appears that Obama can structure the bill so that it's not filibusterable, so that it only needs 50 votes (plus a tie breaking vote from Vice-President Biden). With 59 Democrats in the senate (counting the two independents caucusing with them, and assuming Al Franken can take the Minnisota seat by then), if Obama is really willing to fight for great good here, rather than looking new-age, fairy-land, post-partisan, he can get it; he can get a truly good universal health plan certainly, if, as it looks, the bill can be structured (as a reconcilliation bill) so that senate rules do not allow it to be filibustered. For details on this, see the March 17th McClatchy article, "White House may seek to bypass filibuster rule in Senate".

In addition, New Republic Senior Editor Jonathan Chait writes in his 2007 book, "The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics", the Clinton health care plan could have been structured as a non-filibusterable bill:

Perhaps the most incredible thing about the [1993 Clinton] health care debacle is that the Democrats could have avoided the filibuster that ultimately killed the reform if not for the stubborn insistence of one senator � a liberal Democrat, at that. Passage would have been all but guaranteed if the senate has included health care as part of a "reconciliation bill". This is a senate term for an annual piece of legislation dealing with the budget. A reconciliation bill, unlike any other, cannot be filibustered and therefore can pass with a simple 51-vote majority. Given that the Democrats controlled 57 senate seats, the numbers would have allowed for easy passage even with a half dozen defections.

Yet the Democrats did not do this because West Virginia's Robert Byrd adamantly refused. Byrd was an old fashioned New Deal Democrat who supported reform but cared more about the traditions of the Senate than anything else. He was given to interminable speeches quoting Cicero and other orators of antiquity, and his sense of importance exceeded even Moynihan's. Byrd objected on the grounds that reconciliation bills could be subjected to a twenty-hour debate limit, and he felt the issue too important to be so circumscribed. He would not budge in the face of pleas from Clinton and his fellow senators, and his ability to tie the senate in knots if so inclined deterred the Clinton administration from crossing him. In the end, Dole spearheaded a filibuster that killed the potential reform. (page 204)

You can also read about this in a March 14th, 1993 Washington Post article, "Shortcut for Health Care Plan Blocked".