How Many Republicans Does Bipartisan Health Care Reform Need?

ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf reports:  Republicans emerged from their weekly caucus lunch blasting the possibility of a public health insurance plan and saying that polls which show support for a government-run option are flawed. But their opposition to a public plan is only near-unanimous and Democrats are starting to set the parameters for how many Republicans a health care reform bill needs to really be bipartisan. (Hint: Not that many, according to Democrats).”It remains the view of virtually all Republican senators that a government plan is the wrong way to go, that if we end up with a government plan, we will end up with no other insurance companies, which then puts us very close to a single-payer system, which inevitably in European countries and in Canada has left — had led to delays, denial of care, the kind of rationing that Americans I think would have a very difficult time dealing with,” said the Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader.It’s important that he said “virtually all” Republicans. There are still some out there working with Democrats on health care reform.And after his own party meeting, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada gave a definition of what bipartisan means to him. “We want to do a bipartisan bill,” Reid said. “That's not saying we need half the caucus to come with us.  We need about three or four Republican senators to join with us, to have a bipartisan bill.   That's what we would like.  That's my preference.  And we're going to continue working on that.  I just completed a very, very informative, important caucus.  We spent a lot of our time talking about health care. And there was — not a single senator said, "Forget working with these clowns (he means Republicans).  Let's just go ahead and go to the reconciliation (which would require only 50 votes, but present some other legislative issues).’ Everyone there, liberals, moderates, conservatives in my caucus said, let's try to come up with a bipartisan bill.  We're going to continue to go down that road,” Reid said.It’s going to be a long road.We’re in that in-between period on health care reform. In between the President and Democrats’ commitment to pass reform legislation and any sort of firm, delineated plan for that legislation.In the Senate HELP Committee, the partisan option, Democrats have yet to unveil their plan for a public (government run) health insurance option. Their public markup of Democrats’ as-yet incomplete bill continued today. Over in the Finance Committee, the moderate bipartisan option, they can’t reach agreement on either the policy — a public option that would kick in after the market failed? A co-op system? State-specific public plans? — or how to pay for reform.”We've now had a week to consider, to consider the Kennedy bill in the Health and Education Committee.  And it is so flawed that it can't be fixed, and we need to start over,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander today. Meanwhile, Democrats on the Committee insist that they continue debating the completed sections of the bill while waiting for the more meaty sections to be written — the sections dealing with an employer mandate and a public option are still outstanding.And for Alexander’s request for a health care mulligan, his ideas are unlikely ever to coalesce with Democrats on the HELP Committee.”We have four major proposals on the table,” Alexander said. “All of them in one way or another would give dollars to low-income Americans so they could buy more of the same kind of health insurance the rest of us had. What we don't want is more debt, and we don't want another Washington takeover.”Democrats say the government couldn’t give poorer Americans a big enough subsidy to buy adequate insurance in the marketplace. Further, they say the marketplace is flawed and doesn’t provide good enough coverage for the people who do have it.Alexander also took issue with a CBS/New York Times poll, which found that a majority of Americans — 72 percent — want a government-run health care option to compete with the open market. “Well, the problem with the poll was that the questions were one-sided.  It was the same poll that showed that President Obama would defeat President McCain — I mean, John McCain by 23 points instead of seven.  And it oversampled Democrats.  Other than that, it was a pretty good poll,” he said.Alexander prefers a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that still showed strong support for a public plan, but also concern with the prospect of reduced access to health care that may result from a public plan.