Snowe Proposes Public Option Trigger

Brian Beutler reports for Talking Points Memo that Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has proposed an amendment to the health care reform bill introduced by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) last week that includes a triggered public option.

Snowe proposes that a public plan would be provided in any state in which affordable coverage was not available in the Exchange to at least 95% of state residents. "Affordable access" means that two or more plans are offered with premiums no greater than a specified percentage of the individual's adjusted gross income (AGI), after deducting any available tax credit or employer subsidy from the cost of such premium. The percentage would range from 3 percent of AGI at 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, to 13 percent at 300 percent and above.

Beutler's comment:

This is the same triggered public option proposal she's been floating all along, and it's not one that will appease most progressives. Hearings on the legislation begin tomorrow, and the vote on this amendment will be one of the most widely noted. If it passes, then when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid merges the Finance Committee bill with the HELP Committee bill, he'll have to choose between the two. And that's when the fight over the public option will really heat up.

This means all of this summer's Tea Party nonsense now fades away and the real negotiations begin in earnest. One wonders if Snowe's proposed amendment was a product of the reported talks between she and President Obama.

UPDATE: John Harwood offers an interesting perspective on Snowe's views of Obama on health care in The New York Times.

More starkly, Ms. Snowe dismisses the Republican characterization of Mr. Obama as a big-government liberal moving heedlessly to expand Washington’s role. “I almost sense the opposite,” Ms. Snowe said. “He’s been very realistic in his views on health care. “I’ve gotten an impression that he would, you know, probably do less than more,” she added. His place on the ideological spectrum, she said, is “more moderate than liberal on this question.”

Not only is Ms. Snowe a lifelong Republican, but her husband, John McKernan, is a former Republican governor of Maine. In the interview, she made no commitment on the health care overhaul. Yet she offered a rationale for joining Democrats this year, observing that “the time has come” to act.“I’d like to have more Republicans on board,” she said. Does she have to have them? “Well, no — I’m going to support the right policy,” she concluded. “People really want to get something done.”

Snowe is a refreshing departure from the rest of her party in that she is putting policy over politics. Joe Biden nailed it with his statement that "this is just the bet they have made." The mainstream GOP sees defeating Barack Obama as their ticket back to power regardless of the cost to the country or the will of the people clearly expressed in the last two elections.

--Ballard Burgher