To The Max

Going over the proposals in the health care reform bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, I'm convinced that this has to be some kind of joke.

A tax of 35 percent on premiums paid on insurance plans plans held by middle-class individuals and families?

No public option? Member-owned co-operatives to "compete" with private insurance companies?

Employers aren't required to offer coverage? Companies with more than fifty full-time workers would pay a fee if - and only if - the government subsidizes employees' coverage through tax credits? 

And we're supposed to take the word of a guy that took nearly four million dollars from the heath care industry that this is going to work?

Even when Republicans opposed it it because they think it goes to far and prominent Senate Democrats like Jay Rockefeller oppose it because it doesn't go far enough?

Those Big Sky pols - what a sense of humor.

Unlike Anthony Weiner in the House, who supports a public option, Baucus might have enough clout to get the final bill from Congress to fall in line with his vision of health care reform. After all, when Baucus joined the Senate, Anthony Weiner was still in the eighth grade.