Frist becomes third GOP leader to back reform

Democrats are seizing on former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-Tenn.) support for their healthcare legislation, pointing out that Frist is now the third former GOP leader to express support for reform.

As Jonathan Cohn notes, former Sens. Bob Dole and Howard Baker, both former majority leaders, signed onto a plan that comes close to what Democrats are currently proposing. That proposal, which they drafted with Tom Daschle and George Mitchell, was released by the Bipartisan Policy Center earlier this year.

Here's Cohn's description of the plan:

The Center’s proposal had the same basic architecture as the plan Obama put forward in his presidential campaign and that congressional committees have been debating this year. Everybody would have to get insurance; in exchange, government would make sure everybody could get insurance, by subsidizing the cost for those who needed financial assistance--and by creating a marketplace in which people without access to employer policies could get coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions.

Still, it was hardly everything Obama or the Democrats would have wanted. Instead of a single public-insurance plan into which people could enroll, the Center’s proposal would have given states the option of creating independent insurance plans to compete with private insurers; it allowed the federal government to step in with its own plan only if, after five years, there was evidence the system needed more competition. This was an effort to satisfy conservatives, who believe a public plan might drive private insurers out of business and, ultimately, starve doctors and hospitals of necessary resources by underpaying them.