Word is that Olympia Snowe now wants the cost of health-care reform brought down to $800 billion or lower. That's strange, because Olympia Snowe also wants the subsidies increased from 300 percent of poverty to 400 percent of poverty. Which would increase, not decrease, the price tag of the bill.
Snowe's concern for the subsidy levels was perfectly understandable: Insufficient subsidies mean health care won't be affordable, and the plan won't work. In light of that insight, her desire to drop the price tag doesn't make much sense at all: It makes policies even less affordable, and the plan even less likely to work. Speculation is that Snowe is afraid to be the sole Republican on the bill and feels she needs a concrete concession on the price tag in order to justify her involvement. But you have to imagine her to be quite craven, and quite politically afraid, to believe she'd knowingly make the bill less affordable when she's spent the last few months pushing the "Gang of Six" to make it more affordable. And for what? A vote Republicans will hate her for anyway?
I'd be careful if I were her. She's walking right Health Care Reform right into reconciliation. If she pushes this !@#$ too far, there's not going to be any choice.
