We had hoped that Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Kathleen Sebelius would be confirmed before the Senate left for its two-week recess, but it appears she will have to wait. As Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus told CQ yesterday: "I'm afraid there's a senator who will not grant consent so that means it has to be delayed until after the recess."

The delay surprised us a bit given the tenor of Sebelius' hearings before Finance and the Senate HELP committees this week. As you can see from our play-by-play of the discussions on Twitter, the hearings were light on theatrics, jumping straight-in to the substance of policy. While that substance will have to wait a little longer for a Secretary, we'll recap some of the highlights from yesterday's hearing.

You can find the Governor's opening statement here. In addition to providing Sebelius' vision for how she'll manage an agency with over 64,000 employees and annual budget of $700 billion, her speech demonstrated both the case for health reform and the administration's commitment to working with Congress to accomplish reform this year.

The questions from the senators reflected the broad scope of the secretary's job. Baucus began questioning by asking Sebelius for her views on requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance. She reiterated President Obama's commitment to covering all Americans and said that the president was open to all options on how to achieve that. Sebelius applauded Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the committee, for his oversight work and pledge to work with him to find ways to reduce waste, fraud and abuse. She agreed with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) on the need to find savings in our current system, and with Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) that mental health coverage is a critical part of making Americans well and healthy.

Particularly interesting was her exchange with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about whether private health plans should be forced to compete with a public health insurance option. Schumer asked Sebelius whether this was possible, and how a compromise might be structured. Sebelius answered not only was it possible, it already exists. She noted that more than  30 states offer a public plan side by side with private market plans in their state employee benefit programs. The key is setting up a level playing field that preserves choice for consumers while enabling fair competition between insurers.

As the AP notes, the exchange builds off ideas proposed by New America's Health Policy Director, Len Nichols, and John Bertko, an actuarial consultant for the program:

The idea of using the state employee plans as a model came last month from two policy experts, Len Nichols and John Bertko.

"We were just trying to avoid nuclear war," said Nichols, director of health policy for the nonpartisan New America Foundation. "We saw advocates of Medicare for all pushing to put the country into Medicare. And we saw the right using that to push the moderates out of engagement in the health reform debate."

Schumer said he is looking at Nichols' idea as a possible compromise and is beginning to sound out other Democrats and policy experts. He has room to maneuver because Obama and many Democrats did not spell out what they mean by a "public" insurance option.

For more on how a public plan could be structured to compete on a level playing field with private click here.