The Snowe Trigger - A catch-22 to kill the public health insurance option

[ProSense]

No triggers: The Snowe Trigger - A catch-22 to kill the public health insurance option

Olympia Snowe's trigger is a plan to kill the public health insurance option. Not kill it as in make it weaker, but kill it as in make absolutely sure it will never, ever come into existence.

Senator Snowe's trigger is literally a catch-22, defined by Wikipedia as "a set of rules, regulations, procedures, or situations which present the illusion of choice while preventing any real choice."

Mike Lux explains:

The legislative language says that a public option will be set up in a state in which health care is not affordable to 95% of the state's residents, but it defines affordability as after the new tax credits that are written into the bill to make health care affordable.

Let's break that down.

In Snowe's trigger amendment, if affordable coverage is not available for 95% of a state's residents, then you get a public option in that state. While there are issues with state-based public health insurance options, the catch-22 comes with Snowe's definition of affordability.

Affordable is defined as 13% of income. So, if there is no plan in the exchange that costs less than 13% of a person's income, we'd get a public health insurance option. But that calculation of what a plan costs is made after the government pays out subsidies or employers pay their share. And therein lies the catch-22.

<...>

Today Democrats defeated a Republican attempt to kill health reform in committee. Sen. Snowe supported the Republicans. Now ask: why should Democrats even consider a trigger?

And please, no co-ops:

The co-ops are dealt with, in fact, in a passing parenthetical remark:

(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.)

The CBO confirms what liberal co-op critics have charged: That they will neither cover many people nor put downward pressure on costs, the two supposed benefits of the public option.

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[ProSense]

1. No comment? n/t

[nightgaunt]

2. A trigger that is never pulled---worked before

The same was done with the drugs cost. It has never been pulled because the parameters are such that it would take such a huge number to do so but will never manifest. Ideal to keep everyone, but the people who need it, happy.

[ProSense]

3. If it has never been pulled, it didn't work. That's like saying

to a minimum-wage earner: I'll match every dollar you make annually over $50,000. A phony parameter that can never be met isn't an indication that something is good or working. This is scheme to leave the status quo in place.

[me b zola]

4. I'm guessing that you are not diabetic and have to pay out of pocket