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Collins says she’s open to health care bill

Posted on Oct. 14, 2009, at 2:21 p.m.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins announced support Wednesday for Sen. Olympia Snowe’s work on health care reform, saying “our nation’s health care system requires substantial reform.”

“Due, in large measure, to the efforts of Senator Olympia Snowe, who has worked tirelessly, the legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee represents a substantial improvement over the costly and flawed alternative approved by the Senate Health Committee as well as the House bills,” Collins said in a press release.

“Nevertheless, the Senate Finance Committee’s bill falls short of the goal of providing access to more affordable health care for all Americans. The goal of health care reform must be to rein in costs and provide consumers with more affordable choices,” the release said.

Collins and Snowe are both moderate Republicans and have been seen as two Republicans most likely to compromise on health care reform. They are both members of the “Gang of Six,” a bipartisan group of senators working toward a health care reform bill. Snowe has been wooed by top Democrats, including President Barack Obama, for her support, and Tuesday she broke ranks to support a Democratic health care proposal in the Senate Finance Committee.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., would increase Medicaid eligibility and establish an insurance exchange that would function like a co-op for health insurance. The Finance Committee was the fifth and final committee to approve the bill, and while the outcome of the vote was never in doubt — the committee is made up by 13 Democrats and 10 Republicans — Snowe gave the vote a bipartisan label.

Collins told the Associated Press the Finance Committee’s bill “is far superior to the ones passed by the Senate [health] committee and the three House committees, but it needs substantial additional work.”

Mark Brewer, associate professor of political science at UMaine, said Collins is “playing her cards pretty close to her chest,” and that little can be discerned from her recent statements.

“The fact that Collins has come out and said she’s open to supporting something turns the attention to her now,” Brewer said. Until now, most of the national media attention has focused on Snowe.

In a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Snowe said she would continue to work to a better bill. “Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it. Is it all that it can be? No. But when history calls, history calls. And I happen to think that the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress to take every opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to solve the monumental issues of our time,” Snowe said.

Brewer said Snowe’s vote might ratchet up national criticism of her from other Republicans, who often regard her as “Republican in Name Only,” but said that it probably won’t have as much of an effect on her approval ratings in Maine.

Snowe made clear Tuesday’s vote would not necessarily translate into a vote in the future.

“My vote today is my vote today. It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow,” Snowe said.