I feel betrayed when I hear the talk from our Democrats like we have heard today. The trigger means they are putting off health care when they have a good majority. That is very upsetting.
From Robert Reich today at Salon:
GOP Sen. Snowe suggests we give private health insurers a shot at reforming themselves first. Yeah, rightSept. 9, 2009 | I was just on the phone talking with a reporter for a national media outlet who referred to Senator Olympia Snowe's idea for a public option "trigger" as the "centrist position." Whoa. When the mainstream media start naming something "centrist" the game is almost over, because just about everyone with any authority in our nation's capital wants to be at the "center."
Let me back up a step. The public insurance option has become a lightning rod for Republicans, hate radio jocks, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page and lobbyists for the health-industrial complex who accuse the White House and Democrats of planning a "government takeover" of healthcare. Anything that has the word "public" in it is always an automatic target for their rants. But most Democrats understand that a public insurance option is essential to control healthcare costs and expand coverage -- both because private for-profit insurers now face so little competition in most markets that only the prod of a public option will force them to lower costs and extend coverage, and also because a nationwide public option would have the scale and authority to negotiate lower rates with drug companies and healthcare providers, thereby pushing private insurers to do the same.
The White House is looking for a way to be in favor of a public option but also get enough Blue Dog Democrats -- many of whom hail from swing districts and states, and therefore need some cover -- to vote for it. One such cover is a Republican senator from Maine named Olympia Snowe. If she votes for the bill, Blue Dogs can calm their constituents -- who have been worked up into a lather by the right -- by saying "You see? Even a prominent Republican senator is voting for this."
Reich continues:
What worries me isn't just that the mainstream media are calling Snowe's trigger "centrist," but that the White House might see it as an easy out. "I continue to believe that a public option within that basket of insurance choices would help improve quality and bring down costs," the president said Monday. Fine. But he hasn't yet said the public option is essential. He hasn't threatened to veto a bill lacking it. There's even reason to believe the White House has quietly encouraged Olympia Snowe to pursue her "trigger."
The best way to give Blue Dogs cover is for the president to explain clearly and boldly why the public option is essential to healthcare reform, and why he's ready to veto any bill that doesn't include it. That's also the only way to give the nation a good chance of getting true healthcare reform. Hopefully, that's what he'll do Wednesday evening.
Otherwise, we get a trigger to nowhere.
Our Democrats are refusing to use their majority to get health care reform apparently.
As a former Vermont governor said Sunday on Fox News...."use your majority or lose your majority."