Friends like this...

As an opponent of Obamacare I suppose I should be encouraged that Olympia Snowe has announced that she won't back the Baucus bill. This is the bill that attempts, through compromise, to bring a few soft Republicans on board with Obama's health care reforms without losing the support of the hard Left. But it's difficult to feel optimistic about such developments when I read things like this:

Snowe said she is also concerned with whether Baucus’s bill will do enough to make health insurance more affordable. Snowe and Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) have repeatedly pushed fellow negotiators on the Finance panel to increase subsidies for low-income and uninsured Americans.

Snowe has objected to Baucus’s bill for requiring as many as 4 million uninsured Americans to buy health plans without providing them with significant federal subsidies.

It seems that, for Snowe, affordable doesn't mean cheaper, as in "bending the cost curve down." It means mandates and subsidies, where Americans are forced to buy health insurance, and other Americans are forced to pay more to cover the increased cost.

Less freedom and more taxes -- sounds like a conservative to me!

I look for Snowe to jump back on board as soon as she gets assurances that the bill will extract enough taxpayer money to pay for the freedoms she's willing to strip away.

I don't want people like this "on my side."