[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED]
Ostensibly Republican Senator Olympia Snowe has taken her stand, such as it is, objecting to the “public option” but offering what is billed as a compromise: a “trigger” provision that will allow the creation of some sort (what sort?) of public option in the future if insurance premiums remain too (how?) high.
But, according to Ronald Brownstein’s description in today’s National Journal, she has co-sponsored a successful amendment to the Senate Finance Committee bill that would exempt many people from the individual mandate and lower fines on those who did not comply, thus guaranteeing that insurance premiums would go up, not down.
Because the insurance industry raised this alarm in its much-criticized report on the Finance bill, reform supporters are inclined to dismiss it. But many prominent health care thinkers share this concern. (In Democratic circles, that might amount to sympathy for the devil.) One worried expert is Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology health economist frequently consulted by Democrats. Gruber has calculated that the Schumer-Snowe approach will reduce the number of uninsured people the bill covers by about 3 million — and raise premiums for those it does cover by 10 percent. “You’ll lose the 35-year-old who doesn’t go to the doctor,” Gruber frets.
Equally concerned is Sarah Bianchi, the chief domestic policy adviser for both the 2004 John Kerry and the 2000 Al Gore presidential campaigns. “Insurance works only when the healthy and the sick pay premiums,” Bianchi sensibly reminded in a recent Democratic Leadership Council paper. Rather than excusing more people from the mandate, she says, Congress should spend more on subsidies to help uninsured families buy the coverage they would be required to purchase. “Because they have an affordability problem, they let more people out of the mandate,” she says. “But because they let more people out, they will make premiums go up.”
So, ostensibly Republican Senator Snowe’s contribution, so far, is to sponsor an amendment that even Democratic consultants agree would raise insurance premiums and to support a “compromise” trigger provision that would enable a public option if (!) insurance premiums do not come down.
With Republicans like this, who needs Democrats?
UPDATE [28 October]
Further thought, or something, has convinced me that Sen. Snowe’s “trigger” is not really a trigger at all. It is actually a tripwire (“A tripwire is a passive triggering mechanism, usually/originally employed for military purposes, although its principle has been used since prehistory for methods of trapping game”)?
In this case, the “game” are all the gullible observers who regard the “trigger” as anything other than a slightly delayed but still guaranteed path to the public option.
Soldiers sometimes detect the presence of tripwires by spraying the area with Silly String. If the string falls to the ground there are no tripwires. If there is a tripwire, the string will be suspended in the air without pulling the wire.
Take a close look: Sen. Snowe’s “trigger” is covered with silly string.
