Danger: The Triggered Public Option

If you choose to bore yourself to tears and listen to Obama’s speech tonight, here is what you should listen for. The public option is dead, right? Sure, Obama may mention it, but a whole bevy of Senators have refused to pass any bill that contains it. So it’s dead, right? Right? Why do I keep asking? Here’s why:

Meet Olympia Snowe (RINO - Maine). . . your worst nightmare.

According to CNN and CNBC (and probably others), Sen. Snowe, one of the last great RINOs, is working hard to get Obama the public option. Well, that’s not what she calls it, but that’s what it is. And how does she plan to snatch this crucial socialist victory for her Lord Obama from the well-deserved jaws of defeat visited upon him by the hands of the peasants? Behold: the triggered public option.

The triggered public option works this way. A scaled-down health care reform bill is drafted. It basically does nothing and offends no one. But it lets Obama save face -- something near and dear to the hearts of all RINOs. Hidden within the bill will be the Snowe Amendment (“Snowejob” for short). If (read: “when”) those insurance “reforms” included in the bill don’t result in a reduction in insurance costs within a certain amount of time, a full-on public option will spring forth upon us. . . like a highwayman hiding behind a rock in Maine.

Thereafter, the obvious will occur. The current insurance system will die. You will lose your insurance. You will end up on the public plan. Doctors will revolt, by refusing to take public plan patients. Patients too will revolt when they can’t find doctors and when the doctors they can find can’t get paid for doing any work. The system will go broke quicker than a Congressman in a whorehouse because the numbers are laughably phony. Our budget will collapse, angering the Chinese who hold so much of our debt, but thrilling the gold nuts. And as people begin demanding that their city councils put up statutes of Obama giving Stalin a Snowejob, a retarded woman in Maine will go on television and say, “no one could have seen this coming.”

Seriously, this is the new danger. It is a tactic as old as time itself. When the enemy is on to you, pretend you are doing something else. Since they know they can’t force a public option on a vigilant public, they will try to create a situation that leads to a public option coming into existence without a direct vote. By creating a springing public option, no one need ever vote “yes, I want to socialize our medicine” to make that happen. Indeed, it will happen all on its own, without anyone needing to claim responsibility for it. . . after all, the bill they voted for didn’t create a public option, that “somehow happened” later. In fact, they will assure you, they voted for this bill to prevent the public option.

This is the same trick used by the Congress whenever they want to do something the public doesn’t want and can’t find a sucker to take credit for it.

Now there is one thing that might save us from these masochistic RINOs. Despite the recent mania about the left suddenly morphing into a unified front of evil geniuses, all working according to plan, they are in fact a bunch of whiny morons who can’t stay on the same page for more than a few hours. And they are livid about the idea of a triggered public option. Why?

Go back and read my article about short term versus long term thinking. In that article, I explain how liberal thinking is static; i.e. they live in the moment. They do not understand that people will react to incentives, causing long term shifts in behavior and intended (or unintended) consequences. Thus, they see this legislation simply as a defeat: it does not promise a public option, hence there will never be a public option. Obama lied, my Stalinist dreams died!

Conservatives, on the other hand, who tend to be long term, dynamic thinkers understand that while the bill does not create a public option now, it will be inevitable under this bill. The bill does nothing to lower insurance costs or to help insurers lower costs. Yet, it will trigger if those insurers, who are hostage to massive regulation, don’t do what they cannot do. In effect, the public option is guaranteed. . . but don't tell your leftist friends that, we need them as upset as possible.

As an aside, the difference between long and short term thinking also explains why conservatives understand that a public option will destroy and replace the current system, whereas liberals can’t see that because the bill doesn’t ban private insurance (“if it exists now, and it’s not banned, why won’t it exist forever?”).

So sadly, our best hope lies with the left. Talk about irony though? We need to hope that the left kills a bill designed by a RINO to make sure that the left gets everything they want. Good grief.

In the meantime, call your representatives. Tell them that you will consider a vote for a triggered public option the same as vote for a public option. Don’t let them hide behind the idea that they aren’t supporting a public option or the lie that “it will never happen.” The people have won a victory for democracy, don’t let a Maine SnoweRINO take that victory away.