Reform Rx – Now playing, “Trigger Kill Bill”

Every great once in a while, pulling a loaded gun’s trigger accidently causes a misfire injury or death. That’s accidently; one could of course deviously rig things for an intentional result. However, this column is not about hashing out 2nd amendment arguments but trying to dissect Senator Snowe’s politicking.

Amid a very good analysis by Jacob S. Hacker in The New Republic regarding why a trigger for health care reform will not work, this gem glistened:

“As is well recognized, triggers are generally designed to create political cover, not effective policy.”

In scrutinizing the possible effects of a trigger and the opportunity for insurance companies to anticipate it and thwart its effectiveness, Hacker comes to this unsurprising conclusion:

“Added to the Senate bills, a trigger would represent a backdoor way of killing the public health insurance option that a majority of Americans (and U.S. Senators) support.”

Perhaps this is Senator Snowe’s objective all along.

The TNR piece has enough good information in it to help anyone compose a very good letter to Harry Reid and Christopher Dodd about not including a trigger in a combined Senate bill. Whoops, left out Max Baucus…must be an oversight, sorry misplaced his contact information.