“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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