More from Sen. Bayh

Sen. Evan Bayh had more to say about health care reform in a September 22 interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News. As we've heard before, his chief concern is cost containment:

"As you know, I am alarmed about the deficit. This is bad for our country economically. It's unfair to our children. And if we don't get on top of these rising costs — driven by health care increases and other parts of the federal budget — the markets will react, our economy will suffer. The public has a right to expect better from us.

So one of my litmus tests about how I'm going to vote is: Does it really begin to get the deficit under control? If it doesn't, then it's not worth doing."

Sen. Bayh did sound somewhat encouraged by Sen. Baucus's proposal currently being marked up by the Senate Finance Committee: "I'm kind of watching it as it evolves. But one of the virtues was the Congressional Budget Office did say it began to get the deficit down. That's a good thing."

And how does he see all this playing out?

"If [the final bill] focuses on getting costs under control, both for families and small businesses, starts getting the deficit down, deals with some of the things that rightfully bother people about the current insurance practices — preexisting conditions, lifetime caps, things like that. If we can deal with that to make insurance coverage more stable and secure for people who have it, it would be a step in the right direction worth supporting.

But if, you know, they try and use smoke and mirrors to delude us and in fact the deficit's going up, we're not going to control people's costs, all those sorts of things, then it's not worth doing."

You can read Sen. Bayh's entire interview with Neil Cavuto here or view it below.