Of all the ridiculous, Orwellian nonsense that floods my desk in any given week, the idea of a "trigger" which is now threatening to find its way into the health care reform bill has to be the worst.
Thanks to stories from my grandfather when I was just a little tyke, whenever I hear the word "trigger," my mind turns instantly to thoughts of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans--tasseled shirts, white boots, and spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle. "Away, Trigger!" What a good horse won't do for piece of apple and a bucket of groats.
But the "trigger" being pushed into the health care bill would be anything but a big strong mare rearing up on its hind legs. Instead, it is a rhetorical gimmick--doublespeak designed to render the public option impotent by breaking into 50 pieces, while politicians simultaneously proclaim their support for one public option.
"Away, Trigger!" Which is to say: Keep that trigger the heck out of the health care bill, ya hear?
Have We Not Already Passed the Trigger Point?
What makes the idea of a trigger so ludicrous is the simple fact that this country--and I mean every single state, territory, nook, and cranny--has already passed the point of triggering any kind of safety net plan or public option.
Yippeekayay, kids! We passed the trigger point decades ago. That's what the entire health care debate has been about since the Presidential primaries began.
In other words: For the American public to suddenly buy into the logic that we must now sit back and wait for trigger conditions to occur--is like putting a trigger in an emissions bill that would come into effect if any industrial plants start polluting. Not only is it dumb, but it asks us to be dumb in order to go along with it.
Why the heck should we do that?
There are so many horror stories from so many different kinds of Americans--Democrats, Republicans, Independents--young, old, middle-aged--wealthy, poor, middle-class--everybody has horror stories about lives ruined by the practices of the health care industry.
And here's a little hint about why this is the case: because everybody--100% of everybody--will get sick eventually, and when that happens, your insurance company, which makes money by denying care, not by giving it, will slowly, but surely start to ruin you.
Trigger? The trigger was pulled years ago--the insurance companies pulled it, and now we need a public option.
Insurance Companies Have Known About The Trigger Idea for Years
Way back in 2008 when the recent round of testimonials to Congress about health care reform began, the idea of a "trigger" was tied into a public option but in a different way. In a nutshell, health care reform advocates argued that a public option was necessary to "trigger" the kind of change we needed in the insurance industry. Without a public option, these changes would not happen--they would not be triggered.
Conservatively speaking, therefore, the insurance companies have known about the intention to use a public option to change their behavior and their business practices for at least two years.
Have they changed? Has the threat of a public option over the past two years changed the behavior or the business model of the insurance companies? Has knowing that a public option may soon find its way into law "trigger" change in the minds of the insurance company executives?
I'll go make myself a sandwich while you figure out the answer to that question.
Yippeekayay, Dale! Of course it has not triggered any change in their behavior--because the insurance industry is the largest bureaucratic profit generator in the history of forever. Throw a new variable at them and it gets swallowed up like a tin can tossed into a tar pit.
No threat or demand of future penalty is going to change the behavior of a company that makes its money by draining people of their life savings via the labyrinthine contours of state-level contract law. Are you kidding me? The idea that a new law would trigger even more state-level contract litigation is probably enough to make insurance bureaucrats finally buck up and place that order for a new BMW. More billable hours!
Politically, A Public Option Is The Winner
The last problem is that the idea of a "state-level" co-op system suddenly springing up in case of a specified portion of the population not having fair access to quality affordable insurance plans in the new Exchange--is politically dead on arrival.
Not only is it impossible to explain the merits of this system, but in the absence of any viable news media capable or interested in explaining the contours of even the less complicated current bill--it is impossible to imagine that the public will respond with anything but outrage.
The "trigger" plan, despite its veneer of fiscal responsibility, actually takes the public option and repackages it in a bright and shiny package of government obfuscation so mystifying that everyone--I mean everyone--will respond to it with universal revulsion.
Besides that, the public wants a public option, and we have let that be known such that there are now big blocks of elected officials in the Senate and the House who equate "real reform" with a public option.
The grassroots of the Democratic Party has spent a great deal of time, effort, heart, and energy pushing for a public option.
Even A Weakened Public Option, Better Than a Trigger
All this means this, cowboys and cowgirls: politically and policy-wise, a weakened public option, such that it is, is better than the calamity that would unfold if a trigger finds a foothold in this bill.
This is not about drawing an ideological line in the sand. It is about doing what you set out to and doing it in a way that will work--or leaving town on the horse you rode in on.
Yippeekayay.