Would you support a "trigger" if...

[Becky72]

...the agreement stipulated that if the private health industry does not lower costs by half (from $7000 per person or so that is now to $3500 per capita) within the next 5 years, then the public option would be implemented.

Would you support it?

[ruggerson]

1. No

because it would be repealed before it could ever be implemented.

[mth44sc]

2. No

I'm not willing to play fun with numbers. Now is the time to get this done. We are already only getting half a loaf with the public option.

[Becky72]

3. But wouldn't the health industry feel forced to lower costs?

Since they fear a public option?

[Joe Bacon]

21. Like they're going to do that...

The trigger was never pulled on Medicare D.

The trigger will never be pulled on the Snowe Job.

[IndianaGreen]

30. Snowe Job is a good way to describe Rahm Emanuel's triggers

I didn't vote for insurance reform, I voted for universal health care.

[Joe Bacon]

32. IG, this was the LAST "Trigger" that ever worked!

[mth44sc]

26. They would feel compelled

to do all they could to kill the trigger before it became law.

[mikelgb]

4. Would you support single payer

if it was just extending Medicare to everybody?

[Becky72]

6. Yes

I would.

[mikelgb]

10. good lets work on that then and stop letting this thing slip further away

even touching on the topic of triggers could fire the bullet that kills any reform.

sorry for continuing lame metaphor

[Laelth]

5. No.

No "robust" public option = no deal.

Anything less and we're being sold out.

:dem:

-Laelth

[yourout]

7. +1

[dflprincess]

20. The way it protects the insurance companies,

even if it were "robust" (whatever that means) the public option is a sell out as well. Though it might have been a reasonable first step if it had opened the door to Medicare for all.

[DJ13]

8. No

If competition to reduce costs is the desired result enacting a public option from the start is the only sure means of accomplishing it.

[waiting for hope]

9. No - because

that's a fairy tale - any plan with a "trigger" is a cover up.

[rwheeler31]

11. no

[Amos Moses]

12. No. They've been making big money by letting people die.

To hell with them right now, not in five years.

[debbierlus]

13. No. They have had DECADES. They are a business to profiteer off sickness

ENOUGH

The public option was the compromise.

[rpannier]

14. The only trigger I support is...

If real health care reform with a public option isn't passed by the end of the year, all those losers holding it up in Congress lose their jobs

[rug]

15. No, because by 2014 those figures would double by periodic amendments.

[xchrom]

16. nope. -- that doesn't mean i'll get my way.

but i would then throw my support to more progressive candidates -- and i would be less likely to automatically vote dem in the next cycle.

[dflprincess]

17. No -

I want reform which means access to health care, not being forced to buy a shoddy product from a bunch of crooks who Obama admits are dishonest and Pelosi has called immoral.

[Joe Bacon]

18. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

They did the trigger before with the Pill Bill and it was never pulled.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!

Better to have NO BILL than a toothless Trigger that will never be pulled!

[DebbieCDC]

19. No -- fuck the trigger

this is bullshit

[Starry Messenger]

22. Trigger!

Um, no. (I've just wanted to post that all day.) I'm 38 and I've been without health coverage for nearly 10 years. Hopefully the cancer fairies will not grace me with their presence but it's not something I really want to fuck around with.

[quantass]

23. You Americans are being SCREWED...Public Option was ALREADY a Compromise -- Now This SHIT?!?

One would be a fool to accept a trigger....NO PO then No deal...you'd be getting even more screwed considering as how it was already compromised down from single payer.

Thank goodness i am not american.

[havocmom]

24. No. Workers have been losing real wages since the late 60s. No mandate withouth P.O.

Fuck the insurance companies; they've been fucking us AND pretty much control the 'regulators'

Time to give them some real competition.

[nc4bo]

25. no. nt

[IndianaGreen]

27. A 'trigger' is pure bullshit and a bonanza for health industry

The day after the trigger is passed, the health industry will pour millions of dollars into congressional races to get people elected that will repeal the triggers in 2013, and they will do the same on employer mandates.

Can't you smell the coffee?

:donut:

[harun]

28. Hell to the NO.

[Lyric]

29. NO.

Immediate public option, period. There is no other alternative that doesn't fuck the poor and sick while selling us all to the insurance industry. The point of this is REFORM. A trigger is a toothless warning that they'll pretend to obey, then screw us through every loophole they can find until they're free and clear to rob us blind again. And that day WILL come. A Republican presidency will happen again someday, after all.

If Obama backs down now, then he becomes like a parent who threatens punishment for bad behavior but never actually delivers it. Not a single lesson is learned, other than that Democratic leaders can be "gotten around" because they're too afraid to risk themselves and their jobs for the sake of the best interests of the nation. We'll get walked all over, we'll get BLAMED when it fails (and they'll make SURE it fails) and then we'll get to see the Repukes back in the White House for another twenty years, making things even WORSE, while the poor and the sick suffer endlessly.

There is more riding on this than just 2012. This is THE issue. This is the challenge that was given to us, this is the problem that WE were chosen to solve, and if we fail, then we will be sidelined for decades to come. We need FDR right now, and badly. I hope that Obama has that kind of steel inside of him and brandishes it soon, because if he doesn't, I fear that we will be well and truly fucked.

[Blasphemer]

31. No way.... the industry had their chance

It has already been proven 1000x over that for-profit health care does not work in this country. The very fact that they are working over time to kill reform should tell us, if we ever had any doubt, what they care about. It just can't work.

[Dr Fate]

33. 5 years? 30 to 60 days should be plenty of time.

Sure- I'd give them a few weeks to cut back on bonuses, etc. and see if they are serious, no harm in that.

But 5 years? Lol- who are we kidding? Do you know how many uninsured people could die in 5 years?

[slipslidingaway]

34. Bill Moyers on the Carter proposals for health care...

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05222009/transcript4.html


"BILL MOYERS: Fast forward six years. President Obama has everything he said was needed - Democrats in control of the executive and both houses of Congress. So what's happened to single-payer?

For one thing, as President, Obama is now looking for consensus, peace among all the parties. There was a big pow-wow in Washington last week. The president asked representatives of the health care business to reason together with him at the White House. They came, listened and promised to cut health care costs voluntarily over the next ten years.

Some of us looking on at this charm offensive - some of us who'd been around a long time - were scratching our heads. We've heard this call for voluntary restraint before.

Way, way back in the 1970's Americans were riled up over the rising costs of health care. As a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter started talking about how the government would be clamping down.

JIMMY CARTER: We've built a haphazard, unsound, undirected, inefficient non-system, which has left us unhealthy and unwealthy at the same time. So we must plan, and decisively phase in, simultaneous reform of services and refinancing of cost.

BILL MOYERS: When Carter got to the White House, the very industry that only a decade earlier had tried to strangle Medicare in the cradle, seemed uncharacteristically humble and cooperative. "You don't have to make us cut costs," they promised. "We'll do it voluntarily." So Uncle Sam backed down, and, you guessed it, pretty soon medical costs were soaring higher than ever..."

[Justitia]

35. No. 5 yrs is a death sentence for a lot of citizens. My kid included.

We've been waiting decades.

[WillyT]

36. No.

No.