If the Baucus plan has no Republicans on board, then there goes the justification for making the plan so GOP- and "Big Pharma"- friendly

An odd thing happened on the way to health care reform. Somehow, the House became irrelevant, as did all the other committees of jurisdiction in the Senate. The only person who mattered, for some inexplicable reason, was Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who, along with his former staff, had been bought off by the insurance industry long ago. It was an odd choice for the Obama administration, that promised to get rid of the lobbyist influence in lawmaking.

In any case, somehow Baucus' plan became the only plan that mattered. And just as strange, Baucus was permitted to pick 5 other Senators, Dem and Republican, who would magically come up with a "bipartisan" plan that was supposed to represent all of our votes. Baucus, rather than coming up with a true bipartisan plan, let it be known that his goal was to come up with a plan that met the Republicans' goals, rather than the Democrats on his own committee - Democrats who weren't invited to be part of the magical group of six, even though they represented the President's own plan as detailed during his campaign, and only two months ago as well.

And today, we learn that Baucus GOP health care plan doesn't even have a single Republican sponsor. That means Baucus failed, and it's time to go back to the original plan.

A reader just wrote in the comments to my earlier post:

How has it been possible that a single senator from a small state (Max Baucus) has single-handedly run this legislation into the ground? How has it been possible that this senator, who was elected by a miniscule percentage of the US population, managed to defy the will of the people and give the Republicans - elected to a 40% minority in the Senate - a 50% voice in this powerful committee?

50%? He handed them the bill.

So, to review, for some reason no one can explain, we've (they've) put all of our (their) faith in Max Baucus, who has chucked President Obama's promises to have a single payer plan, and then the fallback, a public option, and instead included lots of Republican proposals in order to woo Republican votes, but now there are no Republican votes. So why isn't Baucus' plan now moot, since it was only intended to woo Republicans? If Democrats are going to go it alone, then why not go with a Democratic plan? And here's a crazy idea, why not go with the plan the President promised when he was running for President?

It's hard to argue with the plan that got the man elected? Per se the public voted for it.