Snowe Becomes Key to Health Care Deal

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September 03, 2009

Snowe Becomes Key to Health Care Deal

President Obama and top aides "have quietly stepped up talks" with moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) on a "scaled-back" health care reform bill, CNN reports.

"The compromise plan would lack a government-run public health insurance option favored by Obama, but would leave the door open to adding that provision down the road under an idea proposed by Snowe."

"The modified proposal would include insurance reforms, such as preventing insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, according to the source. The potential deal would give insurance companies a defined period to make such changes in order to help cover more people and drive down long-term costs. But if those changes failed to occur within the defined period, a so-called 'trigger' would provide for creating a public option to force change on the insurance companies, the source said."

In a likely-related story, WMTW-TV reports HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is in Maine today.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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September 03, 2009