LIEBERMAN: I've been saying for a couple of months now that I'm concerned, that I'm concerned that there's a danger that we're trying to do too much here and the president is trying to do two good things. But doing them at once in the middle of a recession may be hard to pull off. And the two good things are to bend the cost of health care down by changing a lot of the ways health care is delivered. The second thing is to cover some of the people, millions of people, who are not covered with insurance. So, this puts us in the position where you say, on the one hand, what we're about to do in adopting health care reform will, will reduce the cost of health insurance from what it would otherwise be and the other hand you say, oh incidentally, we're going to raise your taxes or cut your Medicare to the tune of $900 billion or a trillion. And people are beginning to think that maybe they'd do better holding on to what they have now.

Lieberman added that he thinks "we should really focus on what's being called health care delivery reform." Asked later by Imus if he specifically supported Sen. Max Baucus' (D-MT) health care reform bill, Lieberman said, "no":

IMUS: Do you support the Baucus bill?

LIEBERMAN: Not, not, no. I mean, not the way it is now.

IMUS: Ok, what about it don't you like?

LIEBERMAN: Well, here's my concern, as I watch the way it took shape. And it goes back to these two things we're trying to do at once. I'm afraid that in the end, the Baucus bill is actually going to raise the price of insurance for most of the people in the country because most of the people in our country have health insurance, either private or Medicare or Medicaid or veteran's benefits.

Unfortunately, the so called improvements that Snowe and the Republicans want will do nothing but make the bill more of a give away to the insurance industry. Here are some of the improvements other than eliminating the public option that Snowe wants to BaucusCare.

Snowe opposes a real employer mandate, and instead favors a disastrously stupid "free rider" provision. It could have serious consequences for low-income workers.

She is against giving the exchanges the power to negotiate with private insurance companies. This is a provision that should help keep down the cost of health care. It would save individuals money and the government money. Snowe fears it is too much government involvement. John Kingsdale, who runs Massachusetts's exchange, called Snowe's insistence that the exchanges not have the power to negotiate price with insurance companies a recipe for disaster.

Just today, during the committee hearing, she reaffirmed her support for "national plans." This would allow health insurance companies to sell national plans in any states. Individuals state would lose the power to regulate these insurance plans sold in their states. The national plans would be exempt from all minimum benefit requirements mandated by the state legislature. This has been for a long time one of the top goals of the for-profit health insurance industry. link