Ted Kennedy, long a health-care power broker, is stepping up his game in the Senate’s health-reform debate. Until now, most of the attention has focused on the Senate Finance Committee, led by Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley, which has released a series of high-profile reports on the health reform in the past few weeks. Now Kennedy, the Massachusetts Dem who chairs the Senate HELP committee , is circulating a draft summary his own health-reform plan. The Washington Post lists a number of sure-to-be-controversial details included in the plan, which hasn’t been made public. The plan would require every American to have insurance, and would require employers to contribute to workers’ coveragethat employers contribute to workers’ coverage. It would

include a government-sponsored insurance plan to compete against private insurers. And it would open Medicaid to families whose incomes are up to 500% of the federal poverty level, according to the WaPo. Kennedy alluded to his plan in an op-ed in yesterday’s Boston Globe . The piece also alluded to Kennedy’s own treatment for brain cancer: “Over the last year, I’ve seen our healthcare system up close,” Kennedy wrote in the piece. “I’ve benefitted from the best of medicine, but I’ve also witnessed the frustration and outrage of patients and doctors alike as they face the challenges of a system that shortchanges millions of Americans.”

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Kennedy Plan: Health Insurance Mandate, Public Option