Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) opposes the public option and voted against both public option amendments in the Senate Finance Committee. And now, she has told the local Arkansas News that she is open to Olympia Snowe’s worthless trigger idea:
“If within those first three or four years all of the things that we’re doing are not motivating the private insurance sector to provide meaningful coverage at an affordable price, if that’s not doing the trick, then maybe there needs to be some type of a trigger in that marketplace to say, ‘We’ve got to get people insured.’” Lincoln said. “With a big enough pool, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get private insurers to do it, but if that is not the case after three or four years, then maybe — it just depends on what it’s coupled with.”
Most of the health care reform provisions do not really start until 2013, so it sounds like she actually wants a delayed trigger that could maybe get pulled around 2017. Not really “the fierce urgency of now” that Obama campaigned on. It is more like the feckless urgency of some time next decade–if things are really really bad. Of course, Lincoln is only open to the idea–she is not yet prepared to say she supports the trigger.
It is good to see Lincoln believes it is more important to give large, for-profit health insurance corporations another chance to play nice, than it is to provide the people of Arkansas a public option that would save them around $1,300 a year on premiums. After all, think what would happen to those poor millionaire CEO’s if they had to face competition form a public option.
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“It is good to see Lincoln believes it is more important to give large, for-profit health insurance corporations another chance to play nice, than it is to provide the people of Arkansas a public option that would save them around $1,300 a year on premiums.”
Not like they have not had decades to do the right thing. They have not. As Senator Snowe said during Tuesday’s hearing “decades of inaction”
The Insurance Industry had their chance. Time to pull the trigger now. We need a public option and so do many people in Arkansas.
Has Lincoln started writing her concession speech yet?
Blanche Lincoln is a security risk.
40,000 die under the current system, – a 9/11 every 3 weeks? – we destroy nations but won’t touch the Insurance Industry?
Again, if Obama was vociferously advocating for Universal Health Care, we’d probably get it.
It’s Obama, stupid!
Check this out: CBO reports show the House bill which includes a public option is competitive with Max Baucus’s crapola bill out of the Senate finance committee. The CBO estimates House bills at around 900 billion which is competitive with the useless, low priced Senate finance bill. This could provide some cover for those who are still fighting for the public option. If they can just scrape off the Blue Dogs who want high reimbursement rates (higher than Medicare plus five percent), the House bill covers more people under Medicaid and has a public plan.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/10/house_health_bill_trimmed_by_3.html?hpid=topnews
How on earth will it be possible to design a trigger that doesn’t immediately fire upon implementation in Arkansas, given the monopolistic health care market? I mean, she needs to admit she is protecting health care insurers until 2017 — since the conditions of a trigger currently exist.
Meanwhile, someone dies every 12 minutes here in America due to a lack of health insurance — so by pushing this insane gimmick, Senator Blanche Lincoln is an accessory to voluntary manslaughter.
And when years go by with no change, and still more are uninsured because nobody can afford it? She’ll be complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
Time to tell Blanche no public option means no government healthcare for her.
Need a ruling from the mod.
Can I call Blanche Lincoln a …………….. never mind.
I want Blanche, the GOP, and the blue dogs on record voting to keep their healthcare while telling the voters to wait for healthcare.
How those sea lions doin’?
“40,000 die under the current system, – a 9/11 every 3 weeks?”
Now it doesn’t look like private pharmas are able to deliver anywhere near the promised inventories of the critical H1N1 vaccine either – the stuff that American pharmas are selling to the government at 4x the price per dose as the European and Chinese versions now getting rolled out to millions in their respective regions. Their superexpensive stuff is stuck in production bottlenecks. Gotta love this country’s healthcare system – fails even for pandemic public health emergencies. The whole rethug argument is predicated on their religious belief that it takes a free and unregulated market to produce and deliver quality care and drugs to everybody – controls on prices will constrain supply and harm people. And yet we can’t get our corrupt medical supply chain to supply vital drugs, even at 4 times the world price. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the US pharmas are intentionally withholding stock to create demand. We should just buy the stuff from the Brits. Bah-humbug.
Arkansas is the first state that is going to get one of the Olbermann/Free Clinic health fairs in November. It is really important to get this well publicized and tie the lack of health care access to Lincoln’s taking lobby money and shafting her constituents.
The conditions of a trigger currently exist.
Ah… but we’re making changes, you see? So we gotta give them a chance to work to see if maybe they won’t start to stop those conditions from existing. Somewhat. And if not, maybe then we might want to possibly examine a public option.
yep. I completely support a trigger. So long as it’s already been triggered ;-)
We all know what “trigger” means and so do they. It’s another word for “kill”. It is a whole exercise in futility.
That’s like giving a rapist 3 or 4 more years to change his behavior before taking action.
Perhaps the people of this country need the same amount of time to see if they purchase health insurance on their own before we subject everyone to a mandate.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the article, I just wanted to say how much I love this website. They don’t censor the comments unlike Huffington Post. I only go to HP because they have some good articles but I think AH is more interested in name dropping and rubbing shoulders than taking action. Jane is a true revolutionary like Amy Goodman. Just wanted to get that off my chest. Thoughts?
Blanche and the rest of the DLC’rs have been given permission by virtue of, what can only be described as, Obama’s silence on the issue.
It may seem counterintuitive, but this actually makes me feel better.
It’s a sign she’s movin’ on down the road….before it was never, now it’s a delayed maybe..but the word public option is in there.
It means she is feeling some pressure. and there may be other things she could comtemplate…like opt in or opt out.
It could mean she would not obstruct enough and would at least vote for cloture.
It’s better than it seems
All I care about is that Blanche Lincoln votes for cloture. I mean, Pryor has said he’ll vote for cloture, and Mike Ross is proposing Medicare for all, for crying out loud. Now it’s true none of them is married to a wealthy obstetrician like Lincoln is, but would that make her pull a kamikaze move like filibustering her own party? I don’t think so.