Two senators offer bipartisan healthcare proposal

Pushing to change how medicine is paid for as part of a sweeping overhaul of the nation's healthcare system, two leading senators offered a plan to pay more to hospitals and doctors who meet federal quality standards and penalize those who do not. Healthcare legislation is probably months away from being introduced. But the proposal by Sens. Max Baucus and Charles E. Grassley suggests the senior members of the Senate Finance Committee have reached some bipartisan agreement about how the federal government should pay providers through its Medicare program.