Trigger Unhappy

by digby

So the rumor is that President Obama is pressuring Harry Reid to put Rahm’s trigger into the Senate health care bill but that Reid is resisting. True story or kabuki dance? Who knows? The White House denies the specifics, but there’s reason, based on past behavior, that they are so enamored of having Olympia Snowe on board so they have accepted triggers and expect Reid to back their “deal.”

But triggers are unacceptable, for reasons that have been spelled out for months. Health care reform is going to be a tough enough sell to those who are mandated to buy insurance as it is. What do they think is going to happen if they are forced to buy insurance that is guaranteed to rise in price until some trigger is hit that will be so outrageous that it requires the creation of a public plan (that will then take even more time to become operational?) It’s an invitation to an epic backlash. It’s already going to be hard to keep people on board during a transition period that lasts for years. To draw it out even further under the ridiculous, pie-in-the-sky assumption that the threat of a public plan will force the insurance companies to behave like decent corporate citizens is a tragic error. The insurance industry will take every penny it can get for as long as it can get it and the people who pay that price will blame the government who made them pay it, not them.

The Washington Post is reporting the story this morning this way:

Reid’s strategy is to try to persuade his Democratic caucus to allow a health-care bill with an opt-out public plan to come to the floor, even if there is no guarantee that all 60 senators who caucus with Democrats would ultimately vote for it. All 40 Senate Republicans, including Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), who supported the Finance Committee bill, have pledged to block legislation that includes a government insurance plan. Reid must unite Democrats to break that filibuster.

“He’s knows what he’s doing is a gamble,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. “But more and more, he’s convinced it’s the right thing to do.”

Reid’s calculation is that it could be more difficult to add a public option through amendments on the Senate floor than to include it in the bill and force opponents to try to find the votes to strip it out. Manley said Reid would spend the weekend canvassing Democrats on the opt-out idea and would probably decide Monday whether to include it in the Senate bill.

The Democratic leader pitched the opt-out idea to Obama at a White House meeting Thursday night and received a noncommittal response. Several senior Democratic sources said Obama is wary about alienating Snowe — the only Republican so far to support a Democratic health-care measure — and had already concluded that her plan for a “trigger” that would create a public option if private insurers don’t offer affordable rates represented a satisfactory compromise.

Reid’s original inclination was to leave the public option out of a final bill he is writing from measures passed by the finance and health committees. But his liberal colleagues began urging him two weeks ago to reconsider, after insurance industry forecasts that premiums would rise sharply under the Finance Committee bill, which lacked a public option. The report had the effect of prodding Democrats to look for better ways to control costs, and the public option — strongly opposed by the insurance industry — reemerged as a possible solution.

It’s fairly clear at this point that some sort of “public plan” is likely to be in the final bill, something that wasn’t guaranteed a very short time ago. But nobody knows whether it’s going to be a public plan in name only. Meanwhile some issues we’ve all been ignoring are coming to the surface. And they are very tough:

For example, as many as 20 votes hinge on resolving a battle over abortion that has pitted an unyielding abortion-rights faction against antiabortion Democrats who want to make sure no federal money is used to pay for the procedure.

I’ve been wondering what was going to happen with that. I’m guessing it’s going to be used as a chip to get the public option. And wasn’t that always obvious? If they get a public plan, there’s no way they are going to let the liberals get away without screwing them over in some substantial way to pay for that effrontery.

Probably the most important element of all this is that the White House is finally showing its cards. They actually think it is important enough to have a “bipartisan” bill only one Republican votes for that they are willing to sacrifice a plan that has a chance to mitigate some of the risks inherent in the mandate and the delays in implementation. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so deadly. Let’s hope they have enough sense to take yes for answer if Reid and Pelosi offer up something different.

Update: The PCCC is launching a petition drive to ask President Obama to abandon this ill-conceived, nonsensical insistence on catering to Olympia Snowe in the name of bipartisanship.

You can sign here and see the ad they are running in Maine.

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