By Bart Jansen, CQ Staff

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised Wednesday not to leave Republicans out while shaping the health care bill, GOP senators said.

Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine said Reid met privately with her and three other Republicans and assured them that the GOP would be included in negotiations with the House on a final version of the legislation.

“He said it would be a bipartisan, open conference” committee, Snowe said after the meeting.

Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Finance Committee, had asked for the meeting as the committee works on its bill. In addition to Snowe, Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah participated in the meeting with Reid, D-Nev.

“It was a very constructive meeting and bipartisan talks are going to continue, and not continue under a hard timeline,” Grassley said.

The group discussed four major concerns: the cost of the legislation, whether to tax health care benefits, whether a public plan option should be available to the uninsured and whether employers should be forced to provide insurance.

In 2003, when they were in the minority, Democrats complained that Republicans largely shut them out of conference negotiations on the law that created Medicare’s prescription drug benefit (PL 108-173).

There is no schedule for the Finance Committee to mark up its bill, which will include ways to pay for the legislation. Cost estimates hover around $1 trillion over 10 years.

Reid issued a statement describing the meeting as “positive.”

“Democrats have said from the beginning of this Congress and throughout this debate that with the health of our economy and our citizens at stake, our strong preference is to pass a bipartisan bill that lowers crushing health care costs for the middle class,” Reid said. “I appreciate some of our Republican colleagues’ demonstrated commitment to that goal, and I look forward to more Republicans joining us at the negotiating table.”

Race to the Recess

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, meanwhile, continues to mark up a more liberal version of the overhaul legislation, and Democrats hope to blend the two panels’ bills before the Senate’s summer recess begins Aug. 7.

Drew Armstrong and Greg Vadala contributed to this story.