Ezra Klein provides a helpful summary and assessment of Olympia Snowe’s proposed amendments to the Baucus health bill. Given how important her vote is, folks should read through that list to see where she’s going.

On several key issues, Snowe is asking for improvements compatible with those offered by various Democrats — Rockefeller, Wyden, Kerry, Bingaman, Cantwell, et al. Think Progress’ Igor Volsky summarizes those here. What does Snowe want?

1. She wants to expand access to the exchange(s) to employees of more employers:

– Lower the threshhold of "affordability" so that when employers don’t or can’t offer "affordable" plans, they get access to the exchange (Snowe [coverage] #C1 on Ezra’s list);

– Increase the size of firms — from 50 to 100 employees — whose employees can choose from the exchange (Snowe #C3);

– Even allow larger employers to access the exchange under state plans (Snowe #C8)

2. She would require better coverage from employer-based plans, which will tend to move more towards the exchange:

– Don’t allow employer-based plans to have deductibles higher than $2,000 (individuals) or $4000 (family) without offsetting contributions (Snowe #6);

3. She would speed up the dates by which employers must meet the insurance reforms, thus pushing more towards the exchange: (under Baucus, employer-based plans get a 5-year delay before having to meet the same standards as plans offered in the exchange)(Snowe #C7)

4. She would soften the Baucus excise tax on high-end insurance.

– Slow down the rate at which the tax applies to more and more plans and permanently raise the cap for those between 55 and 65; (Snowe [Financial] #F1)

– This means the revenues have to come from somewhere/someone else.

5. She would reduce the penalty for those who don’t purchase insurance under the mandate. So revenues have to come from somewhere/someone else. (Snowe #F4)

– Alternatively, replace the penalty with a lower "defined minimum contribution." (Snowe #F5)

If you step back and sum it all up, what Snowe is telling us is that she sees that many more people and businesses than Baucus allows for will need to get access to the exchange. Since employer-based plans should comply with insurance reforms sooner (thus increasing premiums), the number of people who will need to get access to a better individual market will increase even faster.

If more people will be looking to the exchange, and if we impose a mandate requiring people to purchase insurance, we need to provide larger subsidies to more people, and penalize people less, while recoving the costs from other people.

Various Democratic proposals reflect similar insights: the employer-based system will become less affordable over time, so we need to provide affordable options in the individual markets — via the exchange — and that will require that we provide a lot more money to make the plans available in that market affordable.

Of course, the big difference between Snowe and the Democrats is that they would offer the exchange shoppers the additional choice of a public option. She would foreclose that choice so as to shield private insurers from competition. How protecting oligopolies from competition in an administratively mandated market became a "Republican principle" is something Olympia Snowe should explain.

But the common problem Snowe shares with the Democrates is this: Where will the money come from to make the increasingly important exchange plans affordable? (Obama had nothing to say on this point in his recent tv interviews, because, astonishingly, no one pressed him.)

The money to pay for that has to come from somewhere. Snowe and the Senate Democrats seem to agree that the revenues can’t be raised from those who already need help in the exchange. The money can’t be raised from others in the exchange without creating additional affordability problems. And it can’t all be raised by the excise tax, because that has to be scaled back so as not to become a "tax on the wrong people." So who’s left?

What all of the amendments/proposals are telling us is that we need to focus new taxes on those who can afford them, so that more people get access to the exchange, exchange plans are made affordable, more people are eligible for subsidies, and the subsidies are more generous.

Every one of these problems points to the need to tax people with higher incomes, one way or another.

It can’t be said enough that the House proposal for a surtax on those with very high incomes makes a lot of sense. It taxes the "right people" and does so without all the needless (and costly) complexity of the Senate’s proposals. Now it’s clear that Senators from Snowe to Rockefeller agree with this idea in principle. They just don’t admit it.

More:
Breaking, NYT: Baucus offers $28 billion more to make the subsidies more generous and the excise tax less offensive. (Recall CBO said he had a $49 billion surplus to give away over the first 10 years.)

By contrast, the House bill does a much better job of reducing the uninsured and making exchange plans affordable (see Center for Budget and Policy Priorities comparison). And as James Kwok points out, it collects $140 billion more from the wealthiest and uses it to expand eligibility for and the size of subsidies, making insurance much more affordable for more people, while Baucus imposes an equivalent $140 billion tax on the middle class. So even with his additional $28 billion offer today, Baucus is still imposing at least $112 billion more in "taxes on the wrong people."