Reid loses count on votes again

NY Times:

Senate Democrats voiced deep disagreements on Tuesday over the idea of a government-run health insurance plan, suggesting that the decision by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, to include a public plan in major health care legislation had failed, at least initially, to unite his caucus.

Simply to get the Senate to take up the legislation, Mr. Reid has said he needs 60 votes — effectively all 58 Democrats and the 2 independents who caucus with them. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, the one Republican open to supporting the bill, said Tuesday that she would oppose the legislation because it now includes the public plan.

But while some senators who oppose a public plan said they would be willing to let Mr. Reid bring the legislation to the floor, the continuing apprehension of several others indicated enormous uncertainty.

Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, who spent months shepherding a health care bill through the Finance Committee without a public plan because he believed that it could never win 60 votes, said he could not predict how senators might line up.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” Mr. Baucus said when asked if he had changed his view of the public plan’s chances on the floor. “I just really don’t know.”

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Baucus seem more realistic than Reid at this point. He appears to have misjudged his support like he did last week on attempting to carve out the doctor payments from the overall health care bill.

The Democrat CLASS Act program also looks like it is in trouble. The Washington Post reports:

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The idea is to create long-term care insurance that would be available to anyone, including those who are already disabled. People would be automatically enrolled, unless they chose to opt out, and would pay a premium in exchange for the opportunity to receive cash benefits to cover the cost of home care, adult day programs, assisted living or nursing homes after they had been enrolled for at least five years. Premiums and benefit levels would be set by federal health officials, but advocates predict that the program would provide beneficiaries with a minimal sum, around $75 a day.

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But an array of groups -- including the Congressional Budget Office and the American Academy of Actuaries -- have questioned the design of the program, warning that it could easily require vast infusions of cash to cover benefits after 2019.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) called the CLASS Act "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of," and he vowed to block its inclusion in the Senate bill.

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It does not look like Conrad is sold on this plan. I don't think Reid and his cohorts are any closer to figuring out how to pay for these plans than they are at figuring out where the votes or going to come from.