Jun 17 2009
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said today that he would not release a draft of health reform bill taking shape in the Senate Finance Committee, which he chairs, on Wednesday, as previously planned, Dow Jones Newswires reports.
"Baucus said the panel received some of the cost estimates from the [Congressional Budget Office] Monday night, but those estimates did not reflect the most current version of the… proposal," according to Dow Jones. Lawmakers will wait until they receive "accurate cost estimates" before unveiling the plan.
The CBO also released on Monday estimates for the separate piece of legislation unveiled last week by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, which is chaired by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, that drew negative attention to the bill. "This proposal will force an alarming $1 trillion on the federal budget deficit by 2019 alone, without even cutting the number of uninsured in half," Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said of the Kennedy proposal. Snowe is among the Finance Committee Republicans Baucus is hoping will support his version, giving it bipartisan credibility (Vaughan, 6/16).
 This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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