Well Ladies and Gentlemen of the grass roots looky here:  Now emerges from the shadows the hand holding the smoking gun spotted earlier of the Big-Business/Big-Government bipartisan conspiracy to conscript the entire population into a government-run healthcare system.  Today, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) released details of his healthcare plan that would impose fines of up to $3,800 on a family that refuses to purchase health insurance.

Although this plan is being introduced by a top-ranking Democrat, the framework of the program is shaping up to be very similar to the Republican-designed blue print the GOP already foisted on the nation under the Medicare Part D prescription drugs program, which I described some time ago about three fourths of the way through this radio interview.

There is, consequently, good reason for the White House to remain optimistic about achieving a “bipartisan compromise.”  The President’s Senate operatives are embracing Republican thinking and going over to the Red Side to entice GOP Senators to join in the healthcare takeover:

“The plan from Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana would make health insurance mandatory, just like auto coverage. . .It would provide tax credits to help cover the cost for people making up to three times the federal poverty level. . .Those who still don't sign up would face hefty fines, starting at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families.

For those who earn more than three times the poverty level and refuse to purchase insurance, the penalty on individuals would jump to $950 and the penalty on families would jump to $3,800.

Senator Baucus says he is hoping his plan can win bipartisan support.  And, why not?  Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is known to be secretly negotiating with the White House to impose just such a mandate.  Senator Chuck Grassley already stated publically that he, and many in his party, support imposing a mandate on individuals to purchase healthcare.  To wit:  Four other Republicans (Bennett, Alexander, Crapo and Graham) already (co)sponsor a bill (S. 391, Wyden-Bennett) the central organizing principle of which is an individual mandate. 

And, as one liberal wag put it, the insurance companies are not the problem holding up healthcare reform, “Since they desperately want an individual mandate passed and will accept anything short of having their CEOs pushed out of an airplane door to get it.”  It looks like six Republican Senators are just dying to jump out of an airplane to give it to them.

All that is required now to seal the deal is to put a Potemkin front on the public option and paint the words “Insurance Cooperatives” over the door.  Presto magico, a “bipartisan compromise,” a.k.a. RHINOCare.

If ever there were a doubt that a cadre of powerful Republicans is brokering a RHINOCare deal between the White House and big business to replace an employer mandate with an individual mandate (as reported here) and pave the way toward cartelization of the health insurance market (as reported here), the following exchange with Senators Baucus and Grassley should dispel them:

From an interview they did together in June with reporter John Harwood:

HARWOOD: Are you guys confident that this is going…

Sen. BAUCUS: I’m quite confident that we’re going to get there.

HARWOOD: ...you’ll get a bipartisan bill?

Senator CHARLES GRASSLEY: I want to have -- I want to have a bipartisan bill because most of what we’ve done in the Finance Committee and what it takes to get things through the Senate is bipartisanship....

HARWOOD: Right. There will be an individual mandate to purpose coverage?

Sen. BAUCUS: There’ll be a shared responsibility. That is that all Americans will have an obligation to have insurance of some kind or another.

HARWOOD: Yeah.

Sen. GRASSLEY: And I can say there’s a lot of people in my party believes the same thing.

HARWOOD: And that shared responsibility extends to employers as well? You either insure your people or you pay into the system? Can you support that?

Sen. GRASSLEY: No. There would be a great difference in my party on that.  There’s two things that my caucus feel very strongly about. One is not to have a public option, and number two, not to have what you call play or pay.

HARWOOD: And are you opposed to pay or play? You will not support the bill that…

Sen. GRASSLEY: I’m opposed to play or pay.

HARWOOD: So how will you handle the issue of getting employers to participate?

Sen. GRASSLEY: I will handle that because if you have an individual mandate, then the individual’s responsible for their own health care. And for people that can’t afford it, there’ll be refundable credits.

The momentum is building toward a negotiated RHINOCare compromise on healthcare reform.  If it happens, it will be just the latest in a long string of lurches toward a government takeover of everything engineered by Republicans in the name of freedom, security, privacy and free markets. 

It is positively Orwellian.