Here Comes the Olympia Snowe Trigger!
Mike Lux writes a very disturbing piece about something that he warned us about back in June. It's called a Trigger.
The moment I am talking about is the debate of the so-called trigger mechanism for having a public option in health care insurance.
The insurance lobby has had multiple tactics for stopping the public option idea, which they despise because they know if regular folks have choice to go to a public option, insurance companies won't have the same ability to treat their customers like garbage when they get sick. The first tactic was just to try to kill the public option outright, and the good news is that they appear to have failed at that. This so-called trigger proposal is the second tactic: the idea is to write a "trigger" that will allow for a public option only under certain conditions, but write the legislation so that those conditions would never get met in the real world. It's a classic DC tactic, right up there with calling for a commission to study something. Olympia Snowe is carrying the insurance industry water on their trigger proposal, proposing triggers that would only get tripped in some fairyland none of us have ever visited.
Rahm bragged about it in July, but then was forced to backpedal on it when we all came out and raised bloody hell.
Rahm Reassures Angry House Members that Obama Backs Public Plan, No Trigger
As Lux describes it now, the White House is obsessed with Olympia Snowe and they are willing to allow her to write the language in the bill that adds the trigger to the public option. but she will basically eliminate any chance a trigger will actually get triggered.
Media reports and insider buzz make it increasingly clear that key people at the White House have become obsessed with Olympia Snowe on health care, and are willing to do pretty much whatever she demands in order to get her on board. The price is looking more and more like this incredibly bad trigger proposal she has been pushing, a trigger that quite literally is written to automatically never trigger a public option. You see, Senator Snowe is writing language into an amendment that is literally a Catch-22. The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable. Not only would this be an incredibly weak public option (doing it in one state will mean it can't get the market power to compete with the big insurers), but it would be a public option that is written by its definition to never be triggered. This is a trigger specifically, intentionally designed to kill the public option...read on
Please keep up the pressure and don't allow Rahm or the White House negotiate the public option away with bullshit triggers put there by Olympia Snowe.
HCAN writes: The Snowe Trigger - A catch-22 to kill the public health insurance option
Olympia Snowe's trigger is a plan to kill the public health insurance option. Not kill it as in make it weaker, but kill it as in make absolutely sure it will never, ever come into existence.
Senator Snowe's trigger is literally a catch-22, defined by Wikipedia as "a set of rules, regulations, procedures, or situations which present the illusion of choice while preventing any real choice."
Since the media gasbags for the most part have all proclaimed the public option DOA, the trigger will be a point they will hammer progressives that go on TV about. It's the Bipartisan Creep for Broderites. I hope any members of the CPC are well informed before they decide to do the Hardball's, CNN or cough, cough....FOX News. The Villagers think they speak for America when they discuss health care reform, but they do not. Americans overwhelmingly support a public option and one that isn't rigged to a phony trigger. Lux warns that this will cause a civil war in the Democratic Party.
The AFL-CIO, Howard Dean and Democracy for America, bloggers, MoveOn.org, progressive media figures, and the tens of thousands of people coming to Obama rallies and cheering wildly for a public option will figure out quickly that this trigger proposal is a farce specifically written to kill any chance of a public option. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus already are angry at having legal immigrants thrown under the bus by Baucus, all will explode.
Ya think?
This trigger will never trigger a public option, but I can tell you what it will trigger: a civil war inside the Democratic Party just when you most need unity to pass health care reform. I am convinced that there are deals that can be struck that will bring progressive and moderate Democrats, House and Senate Democrats together on a good strong health care bill that will pass. But a trigger designed to never trigger isn't even close to being one of them.
Rahm seems to be using the trigger to get his backroom deals done with Big Insurance, and he's playing with fire.
No Triggers. Do you hear that, Rahm?
another delay and deny strategy brought to you by the (r) and lobbyist(s).
Karen Ignani had a scam
Whose fleecing was approved by Snowe
and everywhere Ignani went
the fleecing was sure to grow.
http://blog.democratz.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmVvgo1wxh4
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOUzZcxUcr8&fe...
"The deal has to be negotiated in the real world, not on some idealized Aristotelian plane. We understand that. A 100-percent deal may be impossible."
Famous "Reality Based" Commentator
She's in trouble with far right Maine GOPs and is losing the Reagan Democrats that keep her in office. If we get a fair to good candidate to run against her (sorry Tom Allen, too soon after losing to Collins) we'll boot her out of office. And no need for a Blue Dog, get us a real Dem!
This totally contradicts what two or three Mainites (?) posted yesterday about Snowe's quasi-invincibility.
Are there are reliable polls that back up this optimism that she's vulnerable?
Mainiacs
me-oww!
It seems likely that the "trigger" would also wind up being an unfunded mandate, and therefore, unenforceable.
What is this 'public option' anyway.
You keep battling for this mythical not-defined non-entity.
HR 676 single payer is the minimum.
This 'Public Option', whatever it would be, it won't be a Trojan Horse for single payer, the Corporations will make DAMN SURE of that.
We are being flim flammed to death.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
The public option is health insurance carried and administered by the federal government, the way the post office is the public option for mail delivery.
It's just exactly the same program as single-payer, only we also allow private insurance companies to exist.
That's it.
By definition, single payer is SINGLE PAYER, there is no other payer.
With single payer the insurance companies do not write primary policies for health care.
It could be permitted that they could write supplemental policies of some sort.
Show me in writing where this 'Public Option' is defined.
In HR 3200 it is so crippled as to be meaningless.
That is my point.
Much ado is being made over and over about something that so far that looks every bit to me like flim flam.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
That's what we have now. The government uses our tax money in programs like Medicare, Medicaid and VA, the insurance companies use our premium money, or it's money out of our own pocket.
What do they hold in common? It all comes from out of our own pocket in the end.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
It does come from our pockets. What matters is controlling the greed of the middle men (and women).
And for that matter the greed of the providers.
Get the profit motive out of health care.
It works to no good end.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
What about for proctologists?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
as the public option in HR3200 appears to be in Section C. And, that is nothing but pooled insurance that will be held at an artificially inflated price to ensure that the insurance racketeers don't have to face any honest competition. Some people may qualifiy for government assistance to cover part of the costs.
It's an Orwellian deception calling it a "public option", when all it is is the option to buy shitty insurance at inflated prices. If it were a genuinely worthwhile option, it would be the option to join Medicare, a single-payer entity.
The whole bill looks like it offers this protection or that protection, but from my reading of it, every protection that is offered can be easily negated by a loophole to allow the insurance gangsters to continue screwing over the public like they've been doing for the last 40 years. The entire POS is just an audacious privatization scam that attempts to compel all Americans to participate in their own victimization, proposing fines and penalties for those who refuse to do so.
It's a complete give away to the insurance, pharma, for profit hospitals and HMOS and nursing home rackets. This may be one of the most cynically predatory works ever to have come out of Congress, and it strikes me as being one of the clearest declarations yet that the People don't matter. The pPeople are just marks, to be fleeced of whatever can be stolen from them.
those who care about the People and the financial well-being of the Nation have signed on as co-sponsors of HR-676. The rest are just out to line their own pockets, and they are willing to screw everybody to do it.
Agreed. There is no way single-payer and insurance co's profits can co-exist - and that is the underlying problem. Single payer (as in Medicare for all) solves all of our health-care problems, but for insurance companies.
The next best "cure" is a fully-funded public insurance company that directly competes against for-profit insurance carriers. HR3200 ain't that.
The worst possible scenario is mandated insurance for all - provided by existing carriers. This is, of course, what the insurance companies would like. This option is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
It long passed time that the health insurance industry faded away into inglorious history.
The mandatory insurance thing is particularly gauling. Forcing you to shop at the company store on pain of retribution from the corporately operated government. I'm waiting on an amendment for them to re-establish debtor prisons.
If you look deeper into what The Public Option is you will find that not everyone will be eligible to "join" it.
There are far too many unanswered questions regarding The Public Option and I am not finding anyone with any credibility who can sit in front of an audience and take questions and give believable UNDERSTANDABLE answers for the average Joe and Jane Taxpayer.
It would be nice if Rachel Maddow or Keith Olberman, or Wolfie or SOMEONE would have Biden, or Baucus, or Dodd, or Conyers or Weiner or SOMEBODY WITH AUTHORITY TO KNOW on their show to answer these simple questions:
1.) Who would be eligible to participate in The Public Option?
2.) How much would it cost? How would it be paid for? Taxes? Premiums?
3.) What would be covered? What wouldn't be covered?
4.) When exactly would the program begin?
Alice is absolutely correct. NO ONE SEEMS TO UNDERSTAND the answers to the above questions. And until we get some straight answers we don't even know what the F we are all discussing here!
Perhaps once we got some straight answers none of us would want anything to DO with "The Public Option"!
Memo to John Amato: How about getting someone on board who is in a position to answer all the tough questions on "The Public Option"???
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
versions and all the amendments. And when they finally put a bill together, it will have last minute add-ons, and will be pushed through before anyone ever gets to read it. This is how it's done. You are being screwed, and they are not done yet. Single payer is the only way to go. Mandatory purchase from private insurance companies enforced by the US government? WTF?
I think we're all aware of the situation and not being flim-flammed. If there is an amendment proposing
a trigger, then the devil will indeed be in the details.
Until then, some of us are sort of keeping our fingers crossed for a public option, but realize that the
principal goal has to be to get a "good" Bill, if we can't get a "very good" Bill. (And then start making the case in a couple of years for the "excellent" Bill, single payer).
My main worry about a public option, BTW, is that given the situation of people who will be eligible to jon it, you'll be getting a large proportion of uninsured. Who are precisely the least "well" people out there.
In short, I fear that the public option will be forced to have higher premiums than have been anticipated (by its supporters) just in order to survive.
the so-called public option is being engineered tofacilitate the insurance racketeers' ability to privatize profit and socialize the losses.
The majority of the members of congress are rotten to the core.
Hyperbole is the easy way out. Some are rotten, but where you find "the majority" is beyond me.
What are your criteria? (Now, I can think of some equally nefarious things to say about Republicans, especially in the House, but won't). Until then, hyperbole prevents thinking.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
institute even a "watered down" Public Option.
Those in Congress who are working for corporate America will write the bill to make CERTAIN that any Public Option will fail. It will take the sickest among us who have no insurance. Perhaps the poorest who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.
Then when it fails, that will be their excuse to NEVER discuss "Singe Payer".
There was a woman on NPR today who made an excellent point. Medicare not only works fairly well, but it is a system that takes care of the sickest, the weakest and the oldest Americans!
Medicare is a success. And it would be simple to offer it to every American.
But because it has no profit-motive the major insurance corporations are against it.
I'm half tempted to jump on a train and go to D.C. to join The Mad As Hell Doctors October 1st.
This is all so disheartening.
"The US has an army of 90,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and is spending $100bn a year, but has still been unable to defeat 20,000-25,000 Taliban who receive no pay at all." - Patrick Cockburn
no public option yet! Not in any form! Anyone who thinks they are not getting flim flammed is just kidding themselves.
...the trigger is a scam, but how about this: a reverse trigger.
We put the public option in place and tell the insurance companies that we'll withdraw it if they meet certain conditions.
As in, every insurance executive learns to play a musical instrument. And no six weeks in Suzuki school here. I mean PLAY that motherfucker.
And we pick the instruments.
I have another idea.
Get Wall Street out of health care.
Close the health insurance companies and let them all become musicians.
That will serve them right.
The old adage applies:
Q: how do you end up with a million dollars as a musician?
A: start with three million.
The health insurance parasites are way, WAY ahead on that one.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Sounds logical to me. Which means the Republicans won't like it.
Obama is trying to finagle any way he can to sell us down river to Big Phara/Insurance, while trying to make it look like someone else is to blame - Snowe, Baucus, etc. Baucus's piece of sh*t bill IS OBAMA's bill. That's all you need to know about where Obama is coming from. Looks like we have Chicago shysters running the WH.
http://www.slate.com/id/2228709/
..will be its downfall. Thanks again, grand ole prostitutes!
Mickey: "It was an epiphany. Do you know what an epipany is?"
Keoni: "NOT NOW MICKEY!"
I've been watching the committee all day. Only 1 Republican amendment has passed to my knowledge. The "downfall" must then be associated with time if you're to be believed. But they intend to get through all amendments by the end of the week (or beginning of next week). More or less on schedule.
THe hangout may yet be over when the committee will vote. Republicans are demanding that the vote await the final CBO scoring...this will mean 3 weeks of "dead time" before a vote. Baucus is really oppposed to it. So that may yet come up as a formal Repub amendment.
people will complain and yap but will let themselves get run over time and time again.
The main problem people are having with the Baucus bill revolves around the public option, and the question of mandates. For the latter, Baucus at least seems willing to listen to alternatives.
But there is also a lot of very positive things relative to the whole delivery system. Something that is
also dealt with in the House Bill 3200. Unfortunately, this area has not gotten the attention it should have (except in the Finance Committee), due to certain distractions.
I'll remember that....duh....the Snowe Job is a Farce!
Next!
That's who she reminds me of, and "Grim" in her name just seals it.
Grim just means mask.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I must be tired. I read the title of this post as Here comes Olympia Snowe Tiger.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
Snowe has crab and lobster.
"The deal has to be negotiated in the real world, not on some idealized Aristotelian plane. We understand that. A 100-percent deal may be impossible."
Famous "Reality Based" Commentator
...it makes a shit sandwich.
I mean really really seriously challenging them. Is Rahm Obama's brain or something?
is Obama's Rasputin.
He just doesn't get it. He's living in a bubble every bit as removed from reality as the one chimpy was living in.
He's a one termer who is going to be wondering what the hell happened in November of 2012.
final corporate-friendly, American citizen-hostile bill is due the Blue Dogs (Baucus's bill aka Obama's bill) and the Republicans (pushing Snowe to include the trigger). Obama/Rahm are also delaying the enactment of the bill until AFTER the 2012 elections, when they think they will be safely re-elected with the Big Pharma/Insurance megabucks in their campaign coffers, and w/o suffering the consequences of the bill's enactment. I agree though that if bill they want goes through, Obama is gone in 2012 - albeit a much wealthier man.
it isn't going to fool anybody.
You're right about the wealthy man bit. Isn't it amzing how somebody can get into politics, get paid a public servants salary, yet walk away from it filthy rich? Curious. Very curious.
No trigger . . .
Unless it's an old Roy Roger rerun
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
about the situation this country is in.
That's funny!
lol
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
Some of us have to hang on to humor to keep from going insane or into a mighty funk.
Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYKLed9eoeE
"The deal has to be negotiated in the real world, not on some idealized Aristotelian plane. We understand that. A 100-percent deal may be impossible."
Famous "Reality Based" Commentator
You elicited a guffaw.
Plus it was nice to listen to the song.
(edit: egad. Poor horse! Talk about being someone's monkey....how humiligratin'...)
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
.
This was so obvious, I wrote about it 2 days ago over on dailyKos.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/21/78497...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSXMW2FMC7A
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
Only if he came up with it by himself, or if it somehow benefits a one state solution in Israel.
me-oww!
Roy Rogers new how to make the best of a bad situation.
See if this doesn't describe what is going on, with our President as Roy, Olympia as Dale Evans, and the kids as the Finance Committee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioX5GN9kozY&fe...
"The deal has to be negotiated in the real world, not on some idealized Aristotelian plane. We understand that. A 100-percent deal may be impossible."
Famous "Reality Based" Commentator
...I'll take out the trash... the checks in the mail and I won't ... in your mouth.
Buying time, how novel an approach. When their to big to fail... and they do, not all participants fail... just the peasants.
The self-serving crooks just need a little more time, that's all!
Study the symptoms not the virus...
This is the "Rahm Emanuel Trigger," not the "Olympia Snowe Trigger." Sleazy Rahm is passively letting his plan be relabeled so he can avoid his due criticism and keep up the illusion of the White House having clean hands in this utter bullshit and betrayal of the American people.
Shaking my Magic Eightball....
:P
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
The
EmmanuelSnowe Trigger was actually invoked the last time Health Care Reform was kicked down the road. It just took fifteen years to find a name for it.No more Triggers.
-- Rob
There's another name for it: Perpetual Status Quo.
The only thing they will trigger is the anger of the left. We worked our asses off for them. Now it's time to step up. Perhaps an Anti Trigger Rally in Washington DC. We'll make those teabaggers look like a church social! If Rahm thinks he and that Charpe headed hagg Olympia Snowe are going to get away with this, they're both sadly mistaken. I didn't vote for Olympia Snowe or any Republican so she can kiss my ass! Go back to your impotent party bitch! If the Dems can get their 60 votes from each other, we'll take them all down. Yes, we'll pick off enough of these blue dogs and replace them with real Democrats and try it again in 2010! Now there's a bumper sticker...Try It Again in 2010'!
Well that didn't take long! There's a story over on the huffington post that says "Whitehouse Denies Pushing Controversial Public Option Trigger."
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