A trigger is a great way to kill reform and con the unaware voter about what true health care reform isn't!

Talk about tying yourself in intellectual knots.

Can ya hear the jingle jangle of health insurance lobbyist money in Olympia Snowe's pocket?

those poor poor insurance companies!!!!

"If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market ... the public option will have significant price advantages," Snowe said.

Translation: Universal healthcare threatens the for-profit insurer's monopoly.

As I've said in a previous thread on this same subject, the insurance companies don't want competition in a free market, they don't want competition at all.

Gosh, Olympia, wouldn't it be terrible if all those incredibly well-off people in Maine could save a lot of money on health care. How about offering up a package like you get, Bitch?

Oly is famous for the trigger. She used it to finesse her vote for the Bush tax cuts--the trigger would flip to rescind the cuts if the deficit got too big. Well, how did that work out?

one can only hope these disgusting toadies for the insurance companies will face the music come election time, but, I won't hold my breath.

i mean the polling is pretty clear. the public is in favor of a public option. the public would probably overwhelmingly approve a single payer system if anyone would take the lead in explaining just how badly they are being screwed over by private insurance companies with their faux concern for free market competition.

finally, here's an issue that people care about because it affects them personally and you have the repukelicans and so-called moderate dems selling their constitutuents down the river so insurance companies can profit off them.

i had hoped obama would be another FDR, instead, it is increasingly looking like he'll be another hoover. unfortunately, the republicans have nothing remotely better to offer.

this is why we would be better off with a sane opposition party instead of an obstructionist collection of pathetic hypocritical big money sycophants.

ultimately, both parties have been bought and paid for and they like the system just fine.

to paraphrase ross perot, i guess we should just bend over and enjoy it.

Olympia Snowe is a bubblehead. What kind of a statement is it about both the republicans and democrats that Snowe is one of the few republicans the senate dems can get to vote with them ?

Immoral Republican is right. "Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the committee's Democratic point man on the public plan, has basically ruled this option out." How about people here say something nice about Democrats for a change?

I get it; some people here are not incrementalists. They think a society as corporately corrupt as ours can be changed in 5 months. Afterall, man's greatest acheivements were done instantaneously. Wasn't the light bulb invented on the first try? Didn't the Wright Brothers invent the airplane in 5 months?

What did you expect. She IS a Republican, after all. They are all ABOUT corporations over people.

Corporations have MORE rights than people in this country, and don't you forget it.

why won't Snowe allow other americans to enjoy the same health plan she has.
congress has a great "socialistic" medical system, but those hypocrites don't want the rest of the citizens to have such good health care.

I reject this nonsense! All government plans are wasteful and inefficient and thus raise costs for everyone while stealing our freedoms from us and pushing us into slavery.

Only a wholly private model can offer good services at the lowest possible prices for the best innovations.

Thus, because I now believe that the private model will lower healthcare costs, I reject it.

I'm 60 years old. My health insurance premium is 77% of my net salary. Do I sound like someone who can wait years for a "trigger"? Right now, I feel like there's a real one aimed at my head.

I think Senator Snowe made an excellent argument for single payer healthcare:)

I just got a letter in this afternoons mail. My Blue Shield health plan is going up 37% on August first. I had an increase last year and the year before, but this one takes the cake. We need a public plan and we need it NOW. Frankly, death is looking better and better. They keep raising the deductable and charging more for less. We need to take the profit out of healthcare.

How fucking stupid IS this woman?

My premium just went up 25% in one month and it was already high even with a huge deductible.

SINGLE PAYER NOW!!! Stop this bullshit debate.

Vote these morons out of office.

" ... she's holding out to see it affixed to a "trigger mechanism," which would, in theory, give insurance companies a years-long window to lower costs on their own and only "trigger" the public option if they failed to do so."
This is nothing more than a recognition that public health care is cost effective and would do private/monopoly insurance and big pharma a dent in their profits ... hence, these groups are operating through Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) as mouth piece to find a way to temporally bring down prices until the public forgets about the problem. They reason ... hey ... we will loose some at the beginning but a couple of years down the line (and much lobbying to get the trigger undone) we can just keep gutting the American consumer ... sheeple ... dummies ... ... you get the picture!