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So, instead of trying to rally the votes -- or using the "reconciliation process" that allows a simple majority to enact legislation having budget implications -- Baucus kept on cobbling together a nearly incomprehensible construct of tax credits, income formulas, fees and other mumbo-jumbo.
This modified Baucus bill is in line to win final committee approval this week. According to Washington's "conventional wisdom," it will then become the vehicle for action by the full Senate, where Democratic leaders have been ambivalent about a public option.
Some observers feel the best chance for the public option to survive may be with a trigger mechanism that would permit it in some parts of the country sometime in the future if private industry doesn't offer enough competition.
The trigger idea has been floated by Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican on the Finance Committee who has indicated even a faint desire to vote for comprehensive health-care reform. However, the trigger would push even this limited public option to some point after 2013, when the insurance "exchanges" are finally scheduled to open.
Yet, if a trigger proposal is needed to win over some votes and beat a filibuster, another approach could be a "reverse trigger," one that would put the public option in place immediately but set up a trigger that would stop the public option from signing up new clients if private insurers cut rates by 25 percent and scored a 90 percent approval rating from customers.
Even then, the "reverse-trigger" public option would stay in place, serving the Americans who had already signed up and ready to resume taking clients if private insurers slide back into their old ways of excessive executive compensation, bloated bureaucracies and huge profits.
By moving up the timetable of reform to "as soon as possible" and putting immediate pressure on the insurance industry for real savings -- in other words, letting voters see real benefits in 2010, not making them wait until 2013 -- the Democrats could show they're on the side of the people and rack up electoral gains in 2010 and 2012.
However, if the Democrats insist on trading the common good for the favors of special interests, all the industry campaign donations in the world may not be enough to save them.
Cross-posted from consortiumnews.com
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