Reminder: Triggers are nothing but a plan to kill the public health insurance option
Posted on November 23rd, 2009 by Jason Rosenbaum in Profits Before People
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As debate on health care moves forward in the Senate, it seems like a good time for a reminder: There is no such thing as a good trigger for the public health insurance option. In fact, triggers are nothing but a plan to kill the public option.
Why?
1. The status quo is unacceptable
The logic at the heart of a trigger is that the status quo is ok, as long as it doesn't get worse.
A trigger says that some condition must be met in the future for a public health insurance option to be created in a state. That condition could be levels of competition or affordability, but whatever it is, the situation on the ground in a state must measurably worsen before the trigger is pulled and a public option created. That's unacceptable.
People are going bankrupt and dying every day because they are uninsured or underinsured. The House and Senate bills don't go into effect until 2013 or 2014, and triggers ask people in states to wait even longer to get relief from insurance company abuses.
As Senator Chuck Schumer said, "Any reasonable criteria for triggering a public plan has already been met."
And that's assuming a trigger is written in such a way that it could actually be triggered.
2. The trigger is a catch-22, designed never to be triggered
We've tried triggers before in this country. Medicare Part D has a trigger written into the bill that will allow the government to start negotiating for better drug prices if they start increasing by huge margins. Even though drug prices under the program have skyrocketed, with Medicare Part D paying on average 30% more for drugs than regular Medicaid and costing taxpayers over $60 billion extra over 10 years, the trigger has never been triggered.
That's what happens when triggers are written by Republicans and their lobbyist friends. Indeed, the trigger proposed by Senator Olympia Snowe, who voted against even debating health care on Saturday, was a catch-22 designed never to trigger.
As I've explained:
The trigger amendment isn't a fig leaf. It isn't even a co-op. It's a plan to kill the public health insurance option outright, and give taxpayer money straight to private insurance companies.
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The overwhelming majority of Americans support a real public health insurance option. Poll after poll confirms this. And the public option is even popular in places like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Nebraska [pdf]. Nearly all Democrats in the Senate support it. And it's the right thing to do.
Triggers are not an acceptable substitute no matter how they are written.
No kidding! The idea behind the trigger is just that, the opponents want to delay health care reform until they can kill the reform off completely!
Also, we must not forget about the ridiculous anti-abortion provision that takes away a woman's right and sets up gender discrimination.
We have come far, but not even there yet. The next battle will be the biggest one that all of the supporters must unite and give it all to the end.
Most people are not aware that the Republicans aligned themselves with the religious right over the abortion issue. They could have solved this issue when they were in complete power though it would have taken the trump card away from them in elections. C'mon all, we're the good guys that support the right to life. Then when life is born they kill it by the death penalty, lack of health insurance, corporate greed that denies a living wage to decent Americans, placing the country in to the hands of the wealthy, killing off our young men and women in wars, lack of preventative medicine, etc. Every where you turn they support the right to life for the wealthiest Americans imaginable. You only have the Bush administration to look at how their tax cuts benefit the wealthiest Americans while the middle class shrinks to amount to nothing. Our way of life is being eroded a little at a time and people are being led like sheep to the slaughter. Unfortunately the master's of spin have tied words on to the fodder that stupid, undereducated people are buying hook, line and sinker. Words like liberal, leftist, socialist, etc. do nothing but inflame people and get them all up in arms. They think that they have the same opportunities to go to college and get a job and rise to the top. This country is run by 5% of the Americans who control 90% of the wealth. They have enough money to spread their lies to the masses and not even touch their wealth. We will not wake up until we truly see that this is a class struggle and they have you fighting over your paltry little salary that you are not paying taxes on anyhow. Mere sheep.