Below The Beltway

It didn’t take long at all for Max Baucus’s alternative health care reform proposal to come under intense  bipartisan fire:

WASHINGTON — The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said Tuesday that he could not support sweeping health care legislation drafted in more than three months of bipartisan negotiations by the chairman of the panel, and several liberal Democrats criticized the bill from the other side of the political spectrum.

The statement by the Republican, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, came just as the chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, put the final touches on his bill to provide health benefits to millions of the uninsured.

“Unfortunately,” Mr. Grassley said, “we’re operating under an artificial deadline set by the Democratic leadership and the White House. I’m disappointed because it looks like we’re being pushed aside by the Democratic leadership so the Senate can move forward on a bill that, up to this point, does not meet the shared goals for affordable, accessible health coverage.”

Mr. Grassley, who participated in the bipartisan negotiations, said he wanted to lower the overall cost of the bill. In addition, he said he wanted stronger guarantees that federal money would not be used to pay for abortions or to subsidize health insurance for illegal immigrants, and he is seeking unspecified “medical malpractice reforms.”

At the same time, Mr. Grassley said he hoped to “stay at the table” working with Democrats. “Legislation that impacts every American should have strong bipartisan support,” he said.

And it’s not just Republicans who trashed the plan before the ink was even dry:

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said he could not vote for the bill in its current form, in part because it did not include a new government insurance plan to compete with private insurers.

“The way it is now, there’s no way I can vote for the Senate package,” Mr. Rockefeller said.

(…)

Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said Mr. Baucus, by paring the cost of the bill, had also cut the subsidies that would help people buy insurance.

“This is reducing coverage for poor and working people,” Mr. Rangel said, adding that such cuts “could destroy the bill.”

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said he doubted that subsidies in the Baucus bill would be enough to enable middle-income people to buy insurance without straining family budgets, and he vowed to seek changes.

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, challenged Mr. Baucus’s plan to help finance coverage of the uninsured by imposing $4 billion a year in fees on manufacturers of medical devices and diagnostic products.

Most significant, though, is the fact that the plan lost the support of the one Republican who might have supported it before it was even made public:

Senate Democrats are going to have to move forward on healthcare without a single Republican supporter after Sen. Olympia Snowe said Tuesday she could not back the Finance Committee’s bill.

(…)

Snowe (Maine), who was one of three Republicans who backed the $787 billion economic stimulus package, was being lobbied heavily by the White House, and some centrists view her refusal to strike a deal with Baucus as troubling. But concerns about how the plan would be paid for prompted her to back away in the hours before its release.

“I do have concerns and I’m not sure they can be addressed before he issues [legislation] tomorrow,” Snowe said.

On the good side, all that paper they wasted to print up Baucus’s bill will make a nice bonfire come the fall.