A subtle(r) slam on undue rural influence on health care reform

Gail Collins writes in her column yesterday of a special subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee:

Baucus has set up a special bipartisan negotiating committee on health care with his pal Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican.

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The senators on this special committee hail from Montana, North Dakota, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine and Wyoming. This was quite a coup on Baucus’s part, since you have to work really hard to put together six states that represent only 2.77 percent of the population.

Since Collins does not use the word rural to describe these six sparse or low population states, I suppose her point is a lot subtler than this rural-bashing rant from a few weeks ago, which was not at all limited to healthcare reform (or for that matter, even politics).