With news that the Senate Democrats have reached a compromise on the healthcare issue – one which Senator Reid claims will resolve the impasse over the public option, and has made Senator Rockefeller smile (quote:  “I don’t smile naturally.” end quote), eyes are again fixated on Maine’s Senior Senator Olympia Snowe to see if she will be enticed by this new deal enough to vote for healthcare passage.

Increasingly over the last week, that was looking less and less likely.

Over the weekend, Senator Snowe met with President Obama about the healthcare legislation in the Oval Office, as the Democrats continue to press her for support.  Her statements gave the usual platitides about working together, finding common ground and the like, but it was obvious she continued to have strong concerns about the Senate bill, specifically the cost to small business, and Snowe made clear her opposition to the public option “opt out” idea.

Snowe’s press release:

Among a number of concerns that Snowe raised were issues that relate directly to the affordability of plans for Maine’s and America’s small businesses.

“I emphasized that health reform legislation must significantly benefit small businesses, which are the engines that drive job growth and that represent more than half of all the uninsured in this country.  Right now, I’m concerned we don’t have adequate information with respect to the bill’s effect on small businesses, and I have requested that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office provide a more detailed analysis.

“I also told the President it will be critical to ensure that states cannot opt-out of the national plans I initially included in the Finance Committee bill, as small businesses lack access to the competitive coverage they could obtain when nationwide plans are available — across state lines — which offer high quality, uniform benefit packages. Moreover, I emphasized with the President that all firms up to 100 employees should be allowed access to the small group health insurance exchanges from the moment they are up and running in 2014, as they would serve as a powerful marketplace for increasing competition and driving down prices – and I have introduced an amendment to do just that.

“Moving forward, I will continue to introduce amendments and work with my colleagues on both sides of the political aisle in an effort to improve the legislation now before us on the floor of the Senate.”

As the week began, it began to appear that healthcare reform is leaving a sour taste in her mouth.  On Monday, Roll Call ran a story (subscription required) which claimed that Senator Snowe felt burned by Harry Reid over his initial refusal to include her “trigger” mechanism as part of the compromise bill, instead settling on a “Democrat only” strategy to bring the bill to the floor.

Roll Call:

In an interview Thursday, Snowe said she has been repeatedly disappointed, and even angered, at times by the decisions Reid and the White House have made in pursuing passage of the complex and far-reaching bill. Snowe was the lone Senate Republican to support a health care reform plan this year. She sought a delicate compromise with Democrats on the Finance Committee in supporting that package, but when Reid melded that bill with a competing measure, he brushed aside her one demand and put forth a plan that contained a public insurance option.

Asked whether her relationship with Reid has suffered because of his tactical decisions, Snowe said, “I put everything in perspective. And I understand that everybody has a role to play and has their obligations. At the end of the day, you have to do what you think is right and follow your own radar, and you can’t depend on anybody, frankly.”

Snowe had hoped Reid would decide to include her proposal to establish a “trigger” for the public insurance option when he merged the Finance package with a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions measure. Instead, he chose a public option from which states could opt out, rather than first giving private companies the chance to reduce health care costs on their own, as her plan would do.

Not only did Reid choose a public option, he also described Snowe as “frightened” of the public option during the Oct. 27 press conference in which he announced his decision.

“I thought it was diminishing, the role and the risk that I took. I didn’t know anybody else taking that risk … at that point in time,” Snowe said, adding, “It is not easy frankly, you know, to play the role that I did in the Finance Committee standing alone. And I just thought that was diminished in the way that he, you know, expressed, you know, my views towards a public option.”

Toward the end of the article, Snowe hinted that she could not support the current bill, and that in the end she may end up simply working to make the bill better, regardless of whether she ends up voting for it or not.

But regardless of whether Democrats adopt her policy suggestions, Snowe said she is committed to being a constructive part of the debate for the foreseeable future.

“I will do everything I can to help make it better,” she said. “Whether I can support it at the end is another question, I simply don’t know. … I certainly can’t support this version.”

Then yesterday, Politico ran a piece called “No Snowe for the holidays” (seriously guys, enough with the last name puns), which made clear Snowe’s belief that the Senate bill represented an expansion of government that would not effectively fight cost:

Democrats have been hopeful they could attract Snowe’s vote for a final health reform deal and gain a little breathing room in trying to reach 60 votes. But Snowe said the latest proposals on the table would take the legislation in the wrong direction, adding more government involvement at a time when voters want less.

“My deep concern is about the breadth and scale of this legislation, taking it in a more expansionistic approach for government’s role rather than reverse,” Snowe told reporters. “You can design incentives in this legislation to maximize the power of the marketplace in making sure the industry performs.”

Already, one of the areas of Snowe’s concern — an expansion of Medicaid to cover more of the uninsured — is fading as a realistic option in the bill, senators said, amid concerns among moderates and many governors that it would put too much of a burden on state governments, which pick up a portion of the coverage costs.

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“Adding millions of people to these programs at a time when they already severely unfunded hospitals is unwise and should be opposed.”

Snowe said she was not aware of the proposal to expand Medicaid coverage to individuals with incomes 150 percent above the poverty line, up from 130 percent. But she was highly critical of the idea when talking to reporters.

“It is a huge burden on the states,” Snowe said.

All of this should be taken to mean the Senator Snowe, for all the public assumptions that she would end up supporting the bill, should by no means be counted on as a “yes” at this point.

As time is going by and the compromise takes shape, Snowe seems to be less and less interested in what she is seeing.  The newest provisions – specifically the medicare buy in idea – have been rejected by Snowe, and she has made her distaste clear:

Democrats have been hopeful they could attract Snowe’s vote for a final health reform deal and gain a little breathing room in trying to reach 60 votes. But Snowe said the latest proposals on the table would take the legislation in the wrong direction, adding more government involvement at a time when voters want less.

“My deep concern is about the breadth and scale of this legislation, taking it in a more expansionistic approach for government’s role rather than the reverse,” Snowe told reporters. “You can design incentives in this legislation to maximize the power of the marketplace in making sure the industry performs.”

Still unclear is her reaction to the new “trigger” idea that has been inserted into this bill, which is a much different “trigger” than the one Snowe had advocated for.  Senator Reid has said that he has not spoken to Snowe since the Democrats concluded their talks, so we will have to wait and see what she thinks of that specific proposal – and we may not hear anything from that until the compromise is scored by the CBO.

None the less, right now Senator Snowe appears to be moving further and further away from voting for the Democratic health care proposal – and quite frankly if she can not vote for this proposal, I can not see any way she would support the final version that comes out of conference when the House steers it left.

We shall see how this all plays out – there is still a long way to go for this bill.

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