So the "Baucus plan" is now public.  You can get your own copy at this link:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/BaucusFramework.pdf

Marcy Wheeler did her analysis of the plan and you can peruse her comments here:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/08/liz-fowlers-plan/

Interestingly, one of Marcie's readers, William Ockham, makes an interesting comment:

WilliamOckham September 8th, 2009 at 12:00 pm 14

Gotta run to a meeting, but I think this is telling. Take a look at the document properties of the pdf that ew links to above. The author is Liz Fowler. The Liz Fowler who was vice president for public policy and external affairs for Wellpoint, the nation's second-largest health-insurance company, until she re-joined Baucus' staff in Feb. 2008. She had done an earlier stint with Baucus from 2000-2005.

As described by the deceptive, right wing Politico...

If you drew an organizational chart of major players in the Senate health care negotiations, Fowler would be the chief operating officer. 

As a senior aide to Baucus, she directs the Finance Committee health care staff, enforces deadlines on drafting bill language and coordinates with the White House and other lawmakers. She also troubleshoots, identifying policy and political problems before they ripen. 

"My job is to get from point A to point B," said Fowler, who's training for four triathlons this summer in between her long days on Capitol Hill.

Fowler learned as a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania that the United States was the only industrialized country without universal health care, and she decided then to dedicate her professional life to the work. 

She first worked for Baucus from 2001 through 2005, playing a key role in negotiating the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. Feeling burned out, she left for the private sector but rejoined Baucus in 2008, sensing that a Democratic-controlled Congress would make progress on overhauling the health care system. 

Baucus and Fowler spent a year putting the senator in a position to pursue reform, including holding hearings last summer and issuing a white paper in November. They deliberately avoided releasing legislation in order to send a signal of openness and avoid early attacks. 

The reason the penultimate paragraph is in bold is to identify the point at which Politico neglects to mention a teeny tiny little factoid:  When Liz Fowler decided to leave for the private sector because she was "burned out", she went to work for Wellpoint as VP for Public Policy and External Affairs.

So if you download the pdf document and open the information window regarding the document, you will see it is authored by Liz Fowler. 

The Baucus plan was literally written by the lobbyist. 

I am having a difficult time trying to stop laughing.  By the way, you may have noticed that Liz also was instrumental in giving us the wonderfully pathetic Medicare Part D.

First, a confession; I have not yet read this book.

Jamie Galbraith's book, The Predator State, outlines what I consider to be the most dangerous assumption under which liberals and moderates are operating today.  The assumption that the solutions to our problems must be market based.  I have strongly felt that the existence of a free market is as much a myth as John McCain is a maverick.  Our only path out of the woods is to abandon this assumption; the challenge is to convince the mob that there has not been a free maket in quite some time.  Although I'm sure some citizen will point out her e-Bay store as proof positive of the existance of a free market.

The last sentence of the review is the one that makes me feel most irate.  (And I have felt this truth for some time.)

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/05/the-predator-st.html

The general theses can be simply stated. First, while conservatives toyed with laissez-faire, they quickly abandoned it in all important areas of policy-making. For them, it now serves as nothing more than an enabling myth, used to hide the true nature of our world. Ironically, only the progressive still takes the call for "market solutions" seriously, and this is the major barrier to formulating sensible policy. Second, the "industrial state" has been replaced by a predator state, a coalition of relentless opponents of the very idea of a "public interest", whose purpose is to master the state structure in order to empower a high plutocracy with nothing more than vile and rapacious goals. Finally, the "corporate republic" created by the likes of Dick Cheney is highly unstable, a formula for national failure. Progressives must wrest control from the reactionaries before it is too late for restoration of America as the world's financial anchor, technological leader, and promoter of collective security.

The free market reactionaries promised that some combination of monetarism, supply side economics, balanced budgets, and free trade was the solution to America's woes. The mantra "free markets" provided an easy antidote to "planning" that was said to constrain recovery and growth. As each conservative policy was tried, however, it resulted in obvious and even spectacular failure. In truth, all economies are always and everywhere planned--for the simple reason that planning is the use of today's resources to meet tomorrow's needs, something that all societies must do if they are going to survive--so the only question is who is going to do the planning, and to whom are the benefits going to flow? There are still a few true believers (principled conservatives that Jamie compares to noble savages in the political wilderness), but most conservatives realized that there is no conflict between "big government" and "the market" as they abandoned the myth but usurped the "free market" label. All we are left with is the liberal who embraces the myth out of fear of being exposed as a heretic, a socialist, or a fool. Thus, the liberal pines to "make the market work better", never challenging the view (abandoned by all but the most foolish conservatives) that government is the problem.

Economic freedom is reduced to the freedom to shop, including the freedom to buy elections, and anything that interferes is a threat. "Market" means nothing more than "nonstate", a negation of use of policy in the public interest. Jamie provides a careful analysis of the frontline battles on many of the most important issues--Social Security, health care, inequality, immigration, security after 9-11, trade and outsourcing, and global warming--showing how "market solutions" are designed to enrich a favored oligarchy through a spoils system administered through the state's structure. The policy "mistakes" in Iraq or New Orleans or at Bear-Stearns do not result from incompetence--indeed they only appear to be failures because we apply inappropriate measures of success. There is no common good, no public purpose, no shareholder's interest; we are the prey and governments as well as corporations are run by and for predators. The "failures" enrich the proper beneficiaries even as they "prove" government is no solution.

(Emphasis, mine)

She cannot understand why the loony liberals have suddenly latched onto to the public option as their make or break issue.  Poor Correspondent Todd tried valiantly to brainstorm through the issue with her and could only proffer that liberals probably reacted this way as a knee-jerk reaction to conservatives attacking the public option.

Sadly, that rendered me speechless as well.  I must reflect on my feelings.  Could I be that shallow?  Am I just another knee-jerk liberal? 

I might take some time and rethink whether or not I am better off paying United Health 25 cents of every health care dollar I spend for the privilege of their fine claims adjudication services.

Please excuse me.

His show was a mound of dreck

He laughed and he cried
 
As he tea-bagged his bride

My sponsors have all gone below deck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYlZiWK2Iy8

it should be a national referendum issue in '10.  Like the opposite of the Contract on America.  Primary challengers to every incumbent who is selling out the nation for personal gain, funded by an internet based fund-raising network.  All the challengers share one common commitment: To vote for HR 676 Single Payer Health Finance.

the sickest of the sickest.  Medicare insures end of life, terminal disease, and all the patients that are going to use use health services at an incredibly high proportion  when compared to their usage rates earlier in life.  The insurance industry makes billions in profit for many reasons, but one of those reasons is the structural ability to avoid the sick!

Therefore, I would submit that having 10, 20 or 40 million or more people flood into Medicare would actually make the Medicare system MORE solvent because better risks are now coming into the risk pool.  (Perhaps an actuary can weigh in on this)

So by solving health care, can we also be solving Medicare?

If you look at any major problem in our economy, almost without exception you will find a small group of people making obscene profits.  Health care, energy, war, finance, you name it.  Where there is a crisis, someone is profiting handsomely.

Not only that, in each and every circumstance, the lobbyists of the respective industries have purchased the legislators of that industry.

The answers are always quite simple.  Accepting the truth on a grand scale is not.