Baucus

Focus on the legislative forest rather than the trees and it's not hard to see why yesterday may end up being listed by historians as one of the key days in the health care debate.

Even though it was almost immediately criticized by some Republicans and Democrats, and even though the Congressional Budget Office's analysis shows that, as proposed, the bill would decrease the deficit, the proposal introduced yesterday by the Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus is an extremely important step in the health care reform process for just one reason: it enables the process to move forward.