This seems to indicate a shift. Maybe it's due the spectacle of Republican Party apparatchiks and their uncontrollable rabid rightwingers' packing heat, crying and whining at town halls. Maybe it's because people are hearing about the eye-popping premiums people are paying for crappy insurance AND THEN GETTING DENIED COVERAGE WHEN THEY REALLY NEED IT!!!
A moderate Senate Democrat said Sunday he could support a bill that would trigger government-funded public health insurance if new health care legislation failed to deliver on its promises.
[snip]
"If, somehow, the private market doesn't respond the way that it's supposed to, then it would trigger a public option or a government-run option," Nelson said.
He said such a provision should be used "only as a fail-safe backstop to the process."
"And when I say trigger ... I don't mean a hair trigger," Nelson said. "I mean a true trigger -- one that would only apply if there isn't the kind of competition in the business that we believe there would be."
http://www.cnn.com/...
This means that the new mandate will be a windfall for murder by spreadsheet thugs known as the health insurance industry.
I damn well know that all the hard work by progressives is what has gotten us to this point, i.e. we would still be talking about the stupid co-ops and not Ben Nelson supporting a triggered public option if it wasn't for the massive fallout due to Democratic pols rolling over on the public option.
If it comes down to it, the progressive caucus is going to come asking for us to support this trigger because health care and health insurance reform IS our waterloo and they know that we will lose seats in 2010 if we don't do this (again, IF it comes to that and we don't get the votes for the public option). I'm not willing to give power back to the murderous Republican Party for any one policy item.