No to "triggers"

The latest proposal in the healthcare reform debate is to defer the public option for now, with the caveat that it could be implemented, or "triggered", several years from now if private insurers do nothing to reduce health insurance costs. This makes no sense for several reasons. First, the insurance industry has done absolutely nothing up until now to control costs, so why should we believe that they'll suddenly wise up and do so, just because there's the possibility of a public option being instituted sometime in the future? (And make no mistake, it will no more than a possibility - no matter how concrete Congress makes the "trigger" legislation, it's inevitable that enough wiggle room will be built in to enable the public option to be deferred again several years from now, or even abandoned completely.) Instead, the industry will likely use the trigger as a grace period to squeeze several hundred billion dollars more out of the American public.

Second, if the public option will be legitimate government policy in three years, why isn't it legitimate policy right now? Why wait?

The insurance industry has had it too good for far too long - raising premiums to policyholders while continuing to delay or deny coverage - and a public option trigger will do nothing more than to extend the insurers' good times for several more years, and won't fix our broken healthcare system. We're paying more for healthcare than every other country in the world, and yet the quality of that healthcare lags most of the developed world, and the private insurance industry's position as profit-grabbing middleman is the primary cause. We can do better, and must do better.

I know the Obama Administration is under a lot of pressure to pass any sort of healthcare reform so it can claim political victory. But 65 million voters didn't put Obama into office so he could claim political victories. Instead they voted for change, for a better way of life for all Americans. Weak healthcare reform is the wrong kind of change, and might be even worse than maintaining the unsatisfactory status quo. Pass a strong public option right now.