"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set the stage for a climactic debate in the Senate over health care by unveiling a 10-year, $848 billion bill that would extend insurance to 31 million Americans without coverage," The Wall Street Journal reports. The proposed measure, which totals 2,074 pages in length, "is the Senate's answer to a bill that narrowly passed the House Nov. 7. The two bills have differences on taxes, abortion coverage and a public-insurance plan and would require considerable work to reconcile if Congress hopes to pass some form of health care overhaul -- the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's domestic agenda." The CBO estimated the Senate measure "would reduce the federal budget deficit by $130 billion over the next decade, and additional amounts over the second 10 years of the program. It achieves that in part through a new Medicare payroll tax and a tax on high-value insurance plans, which has aroused strong opposition." Its cost is "below the $1.05 trillion cost of the health overhaul passed by the House this month."

The Journal reports that the Senate approach "comes down mostly on the liberal side on the question of a new government-run health-insurance plan...," though under the Senate's public option, states could opt not to participate. "As in the House, the Senate plan would have the public plan negotiate payment rates directly with health-care providers, rather than tying payments to Medicare's low rates." In addition, "to ease the financial burden on workers," the bill would cap "premiums at 9.8 percent of income, down from 12 percent" (Hitt and Adamy, 11/19).

The Hill: "Reid added a new proposal to the bill that would increase the Medicare payroll tax for high-income earners by 0.5 percent to 1.95 percent of adjusted gross income. This new tax would raise $54 billion and affect individuals making more than $200,000 or families earning more than $250,000. Pharmaceutical, health insurance and medical device companies would be tapped for a combined $101.9 billion in taxes. The medical device fee was more than halved from an earlier proposal to $19.3 billion to respond to complaints from Democratic Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Evan Bayh (Ind.) and others."

The bill "also includes extensive new insurance regulations, including those that would limit companies' ability to deny coverage or care, cancel policies for the sick, vary premiums on age, health status, gender and other factors" (Young, 11/18)…