Max Baucus gets a kick out of health care reform

Sen. Max Baucus, chairman, Senate Finance Committee

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Montana Sen. Max Baucus said Monday he relishes his role leading the nation’s efforts to reform its costly and sometimes inefficient health-care system.

“I’ve never attempted a challenge as great as this,” Baucus said during a press teleconference hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund that included Doctors for America. “I can’t remember when I have done something with such great relish. I get a kick out of this.”

As chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Baucus has been leading a charge toward health care reform “for a long time now,” he said Monday. In mid-November, the newly re-elected Baucus announced his Call to Action plan (pdf) to reform the nation’s health care system.

Goals of the Baucus plan include health-care coverage for all Americans, lower health care costs and improved quality of health care. His is no short-term plan. “This is a 10-, 11-year plan. This is strategic,” Baucus said during Monday’s teleconference.

Saying everyone’s ideas are on the table, Baucus hopes his Senate committee can propose ways to reform the health care delivery system, cover more Americans with health insurance and pay for the reforms by mid-June.

Also on Monday, the Center for American Progress released a report and an interactive map showing that the ongoing recession is robbing more Americans of their jobs — and their employer-sponsored health care insurance — every day.

Meanwhile, Doctors for America president and co-founder Dr. Vivek Murthy unveiled a national campaign by the grassroots group he leads. The campaign, called Voices of Physicians, is soliciting doctor concerns and priorities for health care reform, and putting links to these concerns on an interactive map.

The campaign aims at informing policy makers and the public about ways the nation’s health care system is failing doctors and their patients, said the Brigham & Women’s Hospital doctor during the press teleconference. Brigham & Women’s is a teaching hospital of Harvard University.