We should have expected this to happen. As soon as Sen. Olympia Snowe voted for health care reform, the nation’s eyes turned toward her counterpart, Sen. Susan Collins. Hijinks ensued.

Some stories said she was open to reform. Others said she was signaling her willingness to vote for it. (How, we don’t know. Semaphore flags? Morse Code?) Collins refuted these reports with guarded statements that neither expressed an outright support, nor a clear opposition for a position.

On Oct. 14, she released a long statement that essentially said she endorses health reform that produces more affordable insurance options and doesn’t cost too much money. But this is not particularly helpful because, regardless of partisan sensibilities, everybody wants that. The question is how it’s done. 

No wonder the Washington Post, on Oct. 22, said this: “The junior senator from Maine is the fence-sitting Republican in President Obama’s sights. Wherever Sen. Susan Collins goes these days, people crowd around, trying to divine which way she is leaning.”

Poker faces are valuable in politics, we understand. On this issue, however, Collins shouldn’t be concerned about making detailed sentiments on reform clear. In fact, as the former state insurance commissioner, her opinions would be quite valuable to this process.

Snowe’s voice of experience came from her diligent work on the Senate Finance Committee, and its labored review of the battling reform bills to emerge with a compromise legislation.

Collins’ experience on the state level — when she was insurance commissioner, Maine enacted some of its most significant and controversial insurance reforms, like community rating and guaranteed issue — is a unique background that will be equally important as health care reform wends through the Senate.

She is one of only a handful of current senators and representatives who have served as a state insurance chief, after all.

And we know where she stands on certain parts of health care reform, like opposing the public option. She supports finding ways to reduce hospital re-admissions, and has co-sponsored legislation aiming to do so. Collins also favors transparency in hospital costs and disclosure of hospital-borne infection rates.

She said all of this to the Sun Journal’s editorial board in August.

Yet, so far, these informed opinions and experiential conclusions have not come forward. We know Collins has strong positions on health care reform, yet in the context of the pending legislation, nobody quite understands what they are, and she isn’t saying.

There’s been a tendency in this issue to view everything through the partisan lens. Hence the block party that erupted after Sen. Snowe’s vote on the Finance Committee, which was hailed as an emblem of bipartisanship, although it neither tilted the outcome nor was indicative of future votes.

Collins should reject the “us vs. them” side of this debate and say what she believes makes sense, or doesn’t make sense, in the health care reform bill and why. Her background as a commissioner of insurance in Maine qualifies her to speak from experience.

Her position as a U.S. senator requires her to let her constituents know what she thinks.

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