More On The Trigger

Steve Benen brings up an excellent point this morning on the whole Susan Collins/public option trigger issue.

Everyone seems to realize that a public option would be a far more affordable way of delivering care. A public plan would lower costs, expand access, and use competition to improve efficiency. Those are, by the way, good things.

Those who like the idea of a "trigger" argue that if we pass a reform package and private insurers can lower costs, expand access, and improve efficiency on their own, we wouldn't need a public option. It's better, they say, to wait for the system to get really awful before utilizing a public option to make things better.

The problem should be obvious: if proponents of such an idea realize that a public option would necessarily improve the overall system -- and they must, otherwise there would be no need for the trigger to kick in when things got even worse -- then why deliberately delay implementation of the part of the policy that lawmakers already realize would help?

Or, put another way, if Snowe and Emanuel know a public option is a good idea, there's no reason to push it off to some arbitrary date in the future, as the system deteriorates in the interim.

Here's the reality: insurance company profits are more important to lawmakers than affordable health care coverage. It's a hard truth, but it's the only logical explanation for this asinine trigger plan. It's not that the public option would force insurance to behave. It's that a public option would fundamentally offer more affordable health care to Americans in a more efficient manner that would save money.

The trigger, as Steve mentions, is a tacit admission that a public option would be a better plan. But protecting our precious national treasures of insurance companies is the goal here, and not expanding affordable coverage to Americans.

The public option is dead, truly at this point. I'm at a loss. Economically, socially, morally, a public option is the right choice. But we'd rather have a plan that down the road will make insurance companies trillions of dollars that we'll have to pay for. If we're going to be paying for it anyway, why not get more efficient coverage?

What makes anyone in America think insurance companies are motivated by anything other than raw profit and greed? You win, Republicans.

Then again, they always do.