By Zack Stovall
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., says she prefers private insurance cooperatives to a government-run provider that would compete with the private sector in reforming the nation’s health care system.

“We want to keep what works in the private industry and make it better,” Lincoln told Arkansas reporters in a conference call today. “There’s a lot of discussion about what else we might need that we can’t get from the private sector.”

Lincoln sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which will have a central role in determining how to pay for a health care overhaul intended to control skyrocketing costs and provide health coverage for 47 million uninsured Americans. More than 500,000 Arkansans have no health insurance, 66,000 of which are children, according to the senator.

“A co-op would be the back up for the private industry,” Lincoln said.

The senator left the door open to supporting a government-option, though she acknowledged she has reservations.

“One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run option would do,” she said.

Following a closed-door meeting Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the Senate Finance Committee chairman, announced he would postpone release the panel’s plan for financing health care reform to give the committee more time to trim the estimated $1.6 trillion cost.

Lincoln said that while there would certainly be costs to reforming health care, those costs would be mitigated by making the current system more efficient.

“We can’t sustain spending the amount of money we do on health care right now. We can use efficiency to create practical savings,” she said. “Unfortunately, we’re a culture focused on immediate gratification. It’s not going to happen overnight.”