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Sen. Olympia Snowe Few plot turns in the bodice-ripper known as health reform have dismayed me as much the heavy breathing between President Obama and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. After Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, made clear he wouldn't support anything called health reform from Democrats, the White House apparently concluded that its quest for a "bipartisan" bill depended entirely on winning token GOP support from Snowe. All the Obama administration had to do was abandon any hope of creating a "public option" government health insurance program"”the single most effective way to curb medical inflation and low-income consumers' most reliable sanctuary from private-sector chicanery.

Snowe's...