U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe advised colleagues to remain “flexible” with their timetable for drafting health care reforms during a Finance Committee meeting on Thursday.

The Maine Republican is a senior member on the committee, which has spent months meeting with experts and vetting proposals to overhaul the nation’s current health care system. The Obama administration has set an August deadline for congressional passage of the reforms, and the committee is expected to take up debate on legislation in less than two weeks.

But members have yet to see a comprehensive proposal or look at an analysis of actual costs.

“It’s ambitious, given nothing is on paper yet to review,” Snowe said in an interview Thursday. “I’ve argued for more flexibility in the time frame; it’s better to get it right than be quick.”

The massive federal stimulus package pushed through Congress earlier this year serves as a cautionary tale, Snowe said.

“Details matter,” she said. “Look at what happened with the executive compensation language within the stimulus; those are the pitfalls we have to avoid. A rush to get this done could create enormous problems down the road.”

President Barack Obama, in a speech Thursday in Wisconsin, repeated his calls for swift action and said the next two months would be critical for reforms.

Questions still loom about what the reforms would look like and how they would be paid for.

The total cost of the health care overhaul ranges from between $1 trillion to $2 trillion, but only $350 billion in savings have been identified, Snowe said.

“We have to ultimately get a bill that is going to be budget neutral,” Snowe said, adding that Obama has said he is committed to that goal as well.

The most contentious topic among lawmakers is whether or not to include a government-run health insurance option to Americans as part of the system overhaul.

Though all of her Republican colleagues on the Finance Committee sent a letter to Obama earlier this week stating their opposition to such a plan, Snowe declined to add her name.

She said she continues to support a public plan only if private insurers fail to meet specific standards for coverage.

“The insurance companies have failed in making this marketplace work,” she said. “So we have a chance to make reforms to it. But you want to give the private marketplace a chance to work post-reform. If it doesn’t, then you want to make sure people don’t get hurt and I’m not willing to rely on a good faith effort.”

But Snowe said if the government provided a public option from the outset, it would likely discourage private insurers from entering markets in smaller states such as Maine.

One alternative to a public option, offered by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, was discussed by committee members Thursday.

Conrad’s plan would allow nonprofits to form “co-ops” to help individuals band together to leverage more affordable plans from private insurers, rather than rely on a government plan to drive down costs, Snowe said. Again citing concerns about how small states would fair under such a system, Snowe said she would still push for a fallback plan if Conrad’s proposal moved forward.

“The point is, is there enough purchasing power to leverage lower prices?” she said. “Small businesses in Maine face extremely high health insurance costs because competition is extremely limited. I don’t know how co-ops are going to change that.”

In a meeting earlier this week with Nancy-Ann DeParle, Obama’s top health care reform official, Snowe said there was a lot of common ground between reforms she would like to see and what the White House hopes to achieve.

“The questions are what are the mechanisms for getting there, but it sounds to me like he’s willing to be flexible,” she said.

An initial draft proposal is expected to be presented to committee members next week.

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