Max Baucus: The man who would reform healthcare

According to this in-depth profile by the Post — and contrary to a good deal of previous reporting — the Montana senator and Senate Finance Committee chair still hasn’t even 100 percent ruled out single-payer.

Your nut graf is in the form of a pull quote:

“I’m sick and tired of being the maintenance senator, the extender senator,” he said in his spacious corner office on Capitol Hill. “Here, we’re doing something. It's holistic, it’s our health-care apparatus. We don’t even have a system in America, really, and the idea is to get some structure, some meaning. You add it all together, and it's strategic. It's fun. A lot of senators want to participate in it, and groups do. They know that the train is leaving the station. There's a sense of inevitability here.”

I’m not sure where the “holistic” train is moving (please don’t say blank-check coverage for Sen. Orrin Hatch’s belovedly “holistic” Utah supplements industry), but the full story makes clear Baucus is seriously wrestling with the issue.