By Zack Stovall
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — The Senate Finance Committee is headed toward recommending a health care plan based primarily on a cooperative system but with elements of the public option favored by President Obama, U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a member of the committee, said Tuesday.

In an interview with the Arkansas News Bureau, the Arkansas Democrat said the plan — which she hopes the committee will present by the end of the week — will be “mostly a co-op type situation” in which insurance cooperatives would be owned and operated by members, but some consideration will be shown to those who favor other systems such as a public option.

“We don’t have this in (the bill’s) language,” Lincoln said. “This is one of those things where nothing is decided until everything is decided.”

Lincoln has been on the record as not preferring either the co-op system or the public option but instead favoring the adoption of “whatever works” from each system.

“The most important thing we have to remember is that doing nothing and saying no is not going to help Arkansans whose health care costs are rising 66 percent but whose wages are only increasing by about 11 percent. It’s important that we fix this broken system, but fix it the right way,” she said.

On Monday, a bipartisan group from the Senate Finance Committee met to discuss a compromise that lacks the government option and leaves out a requirement for businesses to offer coverage to their employees. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, verified that co-ops are the preferred approach.

“The co-op is certainly one of the prominent options that is on the table. It’s safe to say that’ll probably remain in the final document,” Snowe told reporters after the group met.

Lincoln said each co-op would be organized as a nonprofit to ensure that “it’s not going to require annual government funding. Being a nonprofit, there might be a one-time government investment, basically through loans. Those loans would be paid back and then it would be on its own and self-sustaining just like the Post Office is.”

The committee is also incorporating elements of a public plan, Lincoln said, “to make sure there’s a competitive plan that could be there with the private industry but would be affordable with people — providing competition, but keeping the regular industry honest.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this report