As Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid worked to nail down the votes needed to move to a final debate on healthcare legislation, a tepid assessment of the public insurance plan he crafted emerged as the latest potential obstacle to its passage, the Washington Post reports. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of the scaled-down public plan that Reid included in his $848 billion measure said it would have relatively little impact on the current system, would charge "somewhat higher" premiums than its private competitors, and would draw only about 4 million subscribers.
