I'm a little concerned about this item indicating that the White House thinks the trigger is "more progressive" than the opt-out. Okeedokee. But again, this is from an anonymous source to NBC's Mark Whitaker and these sorts of things have been repeatedly shot down.
But I was thinking about the trigger and whether the White House might have a different concept of the plan than the rest of us. On the surface it's clearly NOT the progressive position. So maybe the White House version is, in fact, more progressive than the current public option, at least in a best case scenario. Here's how.
What if the trigger is very strict, and what if it's set up to pull in 2013 when the exchanges and the public option would've gone into effect anyway? And what if the version of the public option that would be engaged at that point was more robust -- even Medicare-plus-5 with a larger initial eligibility pool?
In other words, other than the possibility that the private cartel might actually reduce their premiums to avoid the trigger, this trigger sounds more progressive in theory than an opt-out "level playing field" public option that doesn't get started until 2013 and only covers a limited number of Americans.
As far as I'm concerned, the trigger -- even this hypothetical "progressive" trigger -- is too much of a gamble. But this version of the trigger would certainly be less painful.