Baucus' bipartisan plan: both sides hate it

Max Baucus' healthcare plan, 6 weeks in the making, has arrived and achieved bipartisan plan. Republicans hate it: the Gang of Six is now a Gang of Three as the three Republicans on the Finance Committee refused to appear or endorse the bill. And Democrats hate it: it bypasses a public option and contains massive giveaways to Baucus' overlords in the drug industry.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) was disappointed by the Baucus bill, calling it "health care reform in name only."

"My goals for health care reform include a strong public option, long-term care reform and reform of the Medicare reimbursement system that has disadvantaged Wisconsin for far too long," he said. "I am disappointed that the Finance Committee bill, as written, comes up short on all three fronts. I hope my colleagues on the Finance Committee will change the bill to ensure it is not just health care reform in name only."

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) also said he was unsure he could support a Baucus-like bill on the Senate floor. "To me, it's got to have a public option. This is giving too much to the insurance industry to start off, and you don't negotiate that way," he said.

"If I vote for a bill without a public option it has to have very strong language in other places, and I think Baucus probably falls short on that."

In place of a public option to increase competition and keep costs down, Baucus proposes co-ops, of which the Congressional Budget Office says:

The agency also said the proposal by Baucus, a Montana Democrat, to use insurance cooperatives, rather than a government-run plan, to provide competition to private insurers would ‘seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country.”

Bottom line: the Baucus Plan is awful. The question now is: can Obama get a good bill out of the Senate?