Tim F. suggested, "Write a decent health care bill and dare Olympia Snowe to filibuster it. She won't." We'll see if it comes to that.

-It Has.

It's painfully clear that Snowe continues to ignore what the insurance industry will do absent a public option competitor. To me she is a worthless ally and a complete ass. I say kill any reform bill without a built-in public option. Without one, it will be worse for those who are required to be insured. They will be better off with no insurance.

The DNC should be making commercials that, in essence, shout out that the Repiglican Party is about not allowing us citizens to have any choice at all, that they want us to be dictated too by CORPORATIONS.

Snow has to make these sounds, in order to keep the GOP somewhat at bay.

But I agree - as I've come to realize, I'm probably a fool for supporting a party that feels it has to have at least 75% of all legislators behind every initiative, when the opposition makes do with 33% and makes that seem a majority.

Steve Benen: "[With the opt-out compromise] There'd be a national plan in place, but states that didn't want to participate wouldn't have to. Consumers would have a choice, and states would have a choice."

Not exactly. Consumers in blue states are likely to have a choice. Consumers in swing states might or might not have a choice. And consumers in red states are unlikely to have a choice.

Debating the merits of a trigger vs. an opt-out bill, is like discussing whether you prefer a shit sandwich on wheat or rye.

steinl, you've put your finger on it: snowe remains a republican. we don't need republican votes. why we continue to waste our time pursuing them - and pursuing only one of them at that! - is beyond rational explanation.

well, ok, i'll take one shot at rational explanation: there are three parties in america, the right-wing republicans, the liberal democrats, and the moderate republicans who are scared of the right-wingers and hanging out in the more malleable democratic party.

as a result, you get these kinds of brain-dead phenomena, because really, is snowe ideologically a whole lot different than ben nelson or mary landrieu?

I like the opt out option as the gimme to the GOP. I imagine it's going to be just like the stimulus checks. The red states railed against them but behind the scenes were more that thrilled to take the aid. I'm going to bet they'll do the same with health care assistance. They won't be able to line up fast enough!

I think the people of Maine are pro health care reform (the real thing, not the stuff Repubs, including Snowe, view as "reform").

She is a good senator in many ways, but there are a lot of people whose votes she will never see again, either.

Personally, I think the legislative branch should craft a really good bill, since it's obvious that no Republican is genuinely interested in genuine reform, and vote it in, and then in 40 years time, the Republicans can defend it the way they do medicare now.

In the end, do they need her? I don't care if it passes with 50 votes and Biden casting the deciding vote.

Right now the Democrats should be offering Snowe a welcome mat, not begging her.

Here's Snowe's public option: siding with meanigful reform or siding with the tea baggers and cult-like fringe of her party. She'll have to live with the consequences.

What's up with nice blue Maine that they put up with this?

Sen. Snowe:

Thanks for voting for this PoS bill that we will now eviscerate for the public good.

Feel free to vote against a real HCR bill that includes a public option, and ultimately seal your political legacy as yet another GOP obstructionist who just doesn't "get it."

No matter what good you think you've done over the years, that is how you will be remembered.

Have a nice day.

It's looking like Obama and the Dems are willing to sacrifice a good bill, which they can have without giving Snowe veto power, at the alter of a "bipartisan" bill with one whole Senator from the minority supporting it.
Snowe only supports a "trigger" because she knows that a standard will be created for activating the public option that can never be met. Such as requiring that everyone declare bankruptcy due to medical costs first--as opposed to only half the population.

Hop on over to C&L and check this out:

Schumer: Well, first Leader Reid has the option of putting it in the final bill. If he puts it in the final bill, in the combined bill then you would need sixty votes to remove it and there clearly are not sixty votes against the public option. If… and so we’re urging him to do that and he’s seriously considering it.

Once it passes the Senate if that were to happen, it’s in the House Bill, it’s in the Senate bill and it would have to be in the final product. So it’s very important to see if a public option is in the bill that Leader Reid puts together. He hasn’t yet made up his mind, but many of us who believe in the public option are urging him to do so and so far we’re getting, we’re getting heard.

IF THIS IS TRULY WHAT HE SAID and IS TRUE...then it sounds to me like we can all BLAME Harry Reid if the public option is NOT in the final Senate bill...that's more power than Snowe has...does anyone know if that is correct - couldn't be removed once put in there? Sounds fishy to me...

*****snowe remains a republican. we don't need republican votes. why we continue to waste our time pursuing them - and pursuing only one of them at that! - is beyond rational explanation.*****

I wish that were the case. But we may very well need at least one Republican vote. It's entirely possible a cloture vote will pass with no votes to spare (ie., 60-40). So, with respect to Snowe, it's not so much whether or not she'll support the bill in the end, it's whether or not she'll at least allow a vote to proceed by joining a cloture resolution.

People, people...WE DO NOT HAVE 60 DEMOCRATS. We have about 51 or 52 good Senate votes. THAT IS IT. No more than that.

It's not EVERY Democrat's fault that this is the case.

Enough with the pessimism, allright? Change the small state representation problem in the Senate, or campaign finance laws, and all will be well.

Until then, stop complaining that the D party or Obama is not "tough enough."

For over 60 years the private insurance companies have failed to provide adequate coverage to all Americans. During this period they have fought every effort by the government to legislate an adequate system.

Now, for some reason, Olympia Snowe wants to give the same group of failures and obstructionists another chance to screw it up? Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Send her a decent bill and see if she'll filibuster it. She's going to decided for the whole damned nation? Who is hell does she think she is. She inherited her husband's seat in congress in the first place. Then she has been handed reelections ever since. It's not like she earned it.

Oh, wait. She's a member of the 100 person elite millionaires club, isn't she? She's automatically superior to the rest of us, just like Joe Lieberman and so many others.

Dancer: what if Reid does put the pubic option in that they requires 60 votes to remove it, given that they don't have the 60 votes to remove it, what then happens to the public option ? How does it proceed from there ? Do you know ?

I am so freaking tired of hearing how wonderful the private insurance companies are and how we should bow to that alter.

Fuck them! They let people die daily, weekly, monthly and yearly all for the manna known as insane profits.

Fuck them! There is no reason to keep the private healthcare blood suckers around.

Fuck them! Put them out of business completely.

I do NOT but took from what Schumer said that it would then be in both Senate and House bills when they go "to conference"...so it seemed to me that should go FAR to insure it would be in the final bill that the president gets to sign...but I may be missing something important here...wishing SOMEONE in the know would address this but have little faith in the commentators/pundits/media whores who provide information to the public. And, much as I enjoy good liberal blogs they do not always present the straight scoop either...sorry...

Snowe is correct in one aspect. The American people want a public option. With the bureaucracy of the Senate and Senators for whom corporate loyalty and corporate representation are the number one priority getting true representation and viable solutions to issues that the American people face has been a failure.

Snowe is in fact part of the problem. She is member of vast bureaucracy, a corporate/government bureaucracy, that creates failure after failure after failure.

Wonder if Ed Shultz, Keith, or Rachel will follow up on what this means if Reid does put the public option in the bill .......should would like to know...............thanks Dancer

I e-mailed Schultz with this (not the others) and as much as he rails about "loving your e-mails" have not heard that it is something he's checking into...seldom get a response now that he's a BIG MEDIA STAR!!! C&L should be one of the blogs that people like Keith, Rachel, and Ed have their "crack teams" monitoring...but I have no idea whether any of them do that...I just found that little nugget FASCINATING and couldn't believe someone wasn't picking it up!

If your Guiding Principle For Governing is "Do Whatever Olympia Wants," you don't deserve to govern. Her vote is nice-to-have, not have-to-have.

That being said, I think maybe there are serious cracks appearing in the Republicans' Wall Of Crazy. Maybe Obama's slow, steady approach is working after all.

Snowe's got to be posturing for the repubs. I can't see how a senator from her state can go back to her folks with a bill that has no public option, but does have an individual mandate that forces people to go to the very crooks that are ripping us off now. Only red state teabagging zombies can go for this nonsense and her state is blue.

The Opt Out thingy sounds like a winner - the red states will have to put their money where their mouths are. If the states don't want it, they'll have to explain to their folks why they're still getting crushed by the insurance companies and have no alternatives.

The critical ambiguity is the word "public." What does the user mean? Many would say it's a plan run by HHS. Whether it's organized as a "co-op" or a straight non-profit is irrelevant. A non-profit state plan in one of the country-sized states (CA, TX, NY, FL) would be a "public option" with strong clout, as would plans administered through inter-state compacts sponsored by a number of smaller states.

The "trigger" seems like a genuinely frivolous concept because there seems to be no workable way to define what "affordable" (or the lack of affordability) would be. Without a precise definition, there is no trigger at all. The whole point of a non-profit public option conceived solely to serve its customers -- with neither profits nor extraordinary salaries as alternative objectives that may often be in conflict with each other, and with a great degree of negotiating strength -- rests on that uncertainty. That assures that at minimum we do the best we can do to offer the most affordable insurance possible under our current healthcare system to people who are being required to purchase it.

My view of the best public option is a Federally-chartered non-profit corporation -- think FDIC -- that operates on premiums only (as in current House bill) after start-up assistance. Second best, but not so far behind, would be non-profit, regional (for populations c. 40 million and up) compacts.

In any case, though, it's time for people to start fessing up to what they mean by a "public option"

I would add that it's ridiculous for someone in a state like North Dakota who thinks the public option is a "government takeover") to completely deny the option to someone in New York or Illinois who has expressed strong majority desire for having it as an option. That is siding with the profits and outrageous salaries of the insurance companies against the American people in its purest form. South Dakotans want out. Fine, if they have a reasonable alternative to offer in its place. Let them "opt out" after debating it locally and voting directly or through their state legislatures.

"I would prefer to let the private sector to work through these reforms that we are going to require of them and with the amount of tax credits and subsidies and the exchange that is going to leverage competition and offer choices, that we can make the marketplace perform."

Well the private sector hired a company to work through those reforms and their report was that they couldn't make it work. Per PWC we are screwed either with or without Baucus.

You don't get a second chance to make a first impression. AHIP revealed that they have no interest or intention of acting as a good faith partner in an effort to reduce health care costs if it means cutting profits and changing their business model. Under either the HELP Bill or HR3200 insurance companies were guaranteed the ability to compete for a pool of tens of millions of new customers, in return all they had to do was to change their business models so as to compete for customer volume on the basis of price and service, which is after all how car insurance mostly works now. Instead they prefer to continue a model built on predation and systematically excluding those who actually need the service. Well sucks to be them.

Snowe must understand that insurance companies had their opportunity to be team players and instead committed a flagrant foul. Sorry time for these guys to get benched.

"As I've said I'm against a public option because I think the government would be another vast new bureaucracy, and also create a disproportionate advantage in the marketplace."

I'm sorry, but ten insurance companies with a monopoly over healthcare rationing DOESN'T constitute a vast bureaucracy with a disproportionate advantage over the marketplace?

I hold Olympia Snowe in higher regard than just about any other Republican lawmaker, because she seems thoughtful, honest, intelligent, does her homework, and she is very popular with citizens of Maine. But this statement sounds like something Orrin Hatch would come up with, not Olympia Snowe. Disappointing.

Tim S., that's the whole point; she gets major leverage from merely seriously engaging with policy. Certainly it's to her benefit; perhaps she is hoping to be a beacon of reason in the morass of Republican insanity. But given the state of the Republican party she actually has every reason to filibuster, and will, I'm sure, very reluctantly :(, filibuster if she doesn't get everything she wants.

Snowe wont support real heath care reform. This makes her the crazy lady that dropped a burning bag of dog doo on her constituents front porch.

Always wonderful when a Repub Senator gives you such a great opportunity to get her voted out.

The fact remains that big insurance by refusing care to patients and reimbursement to doctors over typos has ticked everyone off - both patients and doctors. They have a virtual monopoly over the whole process a hugely well financed lobby team and representatives on both sides of the isle.

A friend of mine recently laid off without children - just he and his spouse is paying $2,500.00 dollars a month for his COBRA - that is outrageous. Health insurance costs more than his mortgage – unbelievable.

In 2007, before the current economic downturn, an American family filed
for bankruptcy in the aftermath of illness every 90 seconds; three-quarters of them were insured. Over 60% of all bankruptcies in the United States in 2007 were driven by medical incidents.

The share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems
rose by 50% between 2001 and 2007.

The insurance industry the way it is set up now is destroying the entire market system and they are tone deaf to the tragedies they inflict on the individuals.

Repealing their 1945 anti trust status is just a start opening up the federal healthcare system to all would right the National Ship!

Paul Burke
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