New Terrible Thing Will Ruin Health Care Reform: THE TRIGGER

It's just past four o'clock, so get in your comfy chair because it's time for your Wonkette Tuesday New Health Care Reform Proposals Update! Today we discuss the Max Baucus-favored "TRIGGER COMPROMISE," in which a public health care option would only come into play when private insurance companies fail to meet certain coverage requirements. Let's take a look at Washington's latest hell-spawned Respectable Centrist ploy to ruin legitimate long-term reform!

See, so instead of just going for it, just creating a public option lacking that profit incentive and covering any and all sicklings, thus sparking a beneficial price war with private insurers, Congress may decide to delay the creation of a public option until/unless private insurers are "unable to achieve various metrics for coverage within a certain time frame."

In other words, there will never be a public option, because (a) Congress will keep the wording in the legislation for the "various metrics" insanely vague and (b) Congress is 100% incapable of enforcing any breach whatsoever when it involves such industries as banking or perhaps HEALTH INSURANCE.

Multiple Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post that the White House and key members of the Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committees are in the process of hammering out key principles on health care reform -- with a meeting scheduled at the West Wing this afternoon. One of the components will be music to progressive ears: that any bill includes an option publicly run health insurance coverage. But it also comes with a caveat that could engender opposition from that very same constituency.

A trigger would pave the way for public option to come into place only after certain market conditions are met -- mainly if private insurance companies are unable to achieve various metrics for coverage within a certain time frame. The proposal would placate many of the private health care actors who consider a public plan the first step towards a single-payer system. Progressives, however, view it as reform in name and not substance.

"This is really, obviously, a mechanism to kill the public plan," said one progressive health care reform advocate. "We will see what comes out, but the fact that they are debating this is problematic."

If ever there were a flashing neon red flag of death in legislative jargon, then it is probably, "We will not institute this heavily-lobbied-against major important reform until a TRIGGER goes off and private companies haven't been doing the things we asked them to do. Yeah. Then we'll do it. Later..."

Until next Tuesday!

 Obama, Senate Dems Consider Public Health Care Option With A Trigger [Huffington Post]