CNN’s Ed Henry and Dana Bash are reporting that the White House is "negotiating "with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — a member of the so-called Gang-of-six tasked with producing a bipartisan health care bill in the Senate Finance Committee — to pass a “scaled-back bill that would focus on insurance reforms that both sides could agree to, but would not have a full public option, instead, would have a so-called trigger” :
What we’re hearing that she’s talking about with White House staff is sort of a scaled-back bill that would focus on insurance reforms that both sides could agree to, but would not have a full public option, instead, would have a so-called trigger. What that means in layman’s terms is basically that the insurance companies would have a couple of years to make some dramatic changes. If they do not make those changes, then a public option would be triggered.
A trigger proposal would establish certain benchmarks: if private insurers fail to lower premiums by X% over Y years, then a public plan would enter the Exchange. Policy makers would begin designing a public option program almost immediately after passing health reform legislation.
Keep in mind that the public option, as draconian, as it is, is only one small part of legislation that will put tremendous regulatory powers in the hands of those who want to micro-manage healthcare, treatments, who gets treated for what, what type of research is conducted in the future, what doctors get paid and what coverage insurance companies will be required to provide, to name just a few,
Obama knows his best shot at getting this bill through is to pass it now. Biden stated today that, “the Obama administration is fiercely determined to get a health care overhaul.”
ReplyDeleteThis bill, in all likelihood, will pass in some form. It will be done in the name of compromise and bipartisanship.