The trigger (would trigger a government run insurance option at some point in time if the insurance companies don't cut enough costs) is Olympia Snowe's idea and the trigger wasn't invented to win over the republicans, who would rather see Obama fail altogether. So it doesn't matter what the governor of Minnesota, wannabe president, thinks. We all know by now that the bulk of the republican party is going for Waterloo. Republicans are irrelevant at this point.
The trigger is to get just a few moderate republican votes and a few more democratic votes so that some form of health care can be enacted.
Even as members of President Obama’s fractured party appeared to warm to the notion of putting a so-called “trigger” on any public health insurance option in health care reform legislation, Minnesota’s Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty said the approach was a bad idea. He said it would not help create the bipartisanship the White House and some Congressional Democrats – particularly those in the Senate – are looking for in order to pass a health care reform bill by the end of the year.
“There’s lots of things we could agree to on a bipartisan basis,” Pawlenty said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “the public option isn’t one of them. The trigger option simply kicks the can down the road.” CNN
