Forbes Magazine features an interesting article discussing “What’s on Tap for Small Business in the New Senate”. The article describes ideas offered by the next Senate’s leaders for improving small business access to health care. Among those ideas is the possible resurrection of a Democrat initiative (S. 637) offered by Senators Dick Durbin (D – Ill.) and Blanche Lincoln (D – Ark.) as an alternative to Senator Enzi’s (R – Wyo.) association health plan idea that “would create a small firm buy-in system similar to federal employees’ health benefits program.”

As the current minority blocked consideration of Senator Enzi’s association health plan bill (S. 1955) and a similar House enacted bill (H.R. 525) even though the Republicans had a 55 seat majority, enacting such large scale changes strike me as unlikely as the Democrats will have a smaller 51 seat majority in the next Senate. But we shall see.