Does Anyone Actually Understand the Health Care Debate?:
Okay, let's see if we can get this straight:

There's the "public option," the worst-branded good idea since solar power, which is a federal government-run not-for-profit health insurance program that would be there as a way to force for-profit insurance companies to rein in costs and not be such dickheads because it would be part of an "exchange," a menu of various kinds of health insurances competing for your (or your company's) health insurance dollars, all private except for the federal government-run one, depending on how many accessories you want or can afford on your policy; however, as a way to water it down for insurance company lobbyists and their pet members of Congress, as well as for idiots who don't actually get how any of this works, the people who could get a public option would be those who can't get health insurance through their work, either because it's not offered or because they don't work, and small businesses, who routinely get dicked over by insurance companies because they are, as mentioned before, such dickheads. And people who can't afford jack shit would get reduced cost or free public option insurance, just like school lunches. But wait...

That's too socialist for conservative Democrats, who wouldn't know a socialist if Karl Marx bit them on the ass and yelled, "Lose your chains"(and let's not even talk about Republicans [yet] because they're not part of the equation), so instead of a really stupidly-named "public option," they might would maybe perhaps be willing to talk about possibly having health care cooperatives, which would be privately-run and based on premiums after getting seed money from the federal government, but they'd be non-profit, which would possibly maybe, in an ideal world, provide the competition that supposedly would eventually drive down costs if and when things get going in a few years if maybe the co-ops are allowed to negotiate lower fees for services, unless the drug companies and others get in the way. But wait...

That's all a bit too centralized for some conservative Democrats, who, really, need to have primary candidates run against them, so instead they are thinking about giving states the money to run their own versions of the aforementioned shittily-labeled public option or the previously discussed co-op or some Frankensteinian combination of those and other things cobbled together that would be "experiments" in creating competition for the dickhead insurance companies and, in an ideal world, could maybe possibly lower costs in the long run if the experiments are successful, but, hey, at least then Idaho or New Hampshire would only have itself to blame and not the Congress if it turns out they made things worse. But wait...

That's all a bit too cart-before-the-horse for some conservative Democrats and the one and only Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe, who might maybe be willing to vote for some kind of health care bill if perhaps it possibly maybe has something in it that covers her ass with fellow Republicans but still gives her the semi-compassionate street cred with her allegedly independent-thinking constituents who mostly just want the previously mentioned poorly-marketed public option. So they've come up with this idea of a "trigger," which means that if the insurance companies, who are, as mentioned before, dickheads, all of a sudden think there might one day perhaps be some kind of public option, they might consider being marginally less dickish about things like pre-existing conditions and cutting sick people off and jacking up premiums, which does more than anything else to harm the bottom line of all American businesses except the insurance companies, and thus, in concept, in an ideal world, the dickhead insurance companies, who have proven so trustworthy in the past, will rein in their costs, and if they don't, then, after a few years, oh, boy, they better watch out because, depending on how Congress words it, they could face a federal public option or co-op or 50 state-run versions of those previously mentioned and described potential possibilities if any trigger is actually pulled, because any Congress after this one can merely unload the gun.

Is that about right? Are they just fucking with us?

The only real question remaining before any of this convoluted, alienating nonsense is passed is if Democrats will realize that the majority of the people in this country want a straightforward government-run health plan, a, yes, "public option." (What they really want is nationalized health care, but, shhh, Obama says we're not allowed to bring that up.) The electoral implications are simple: if a bill with any kind of watered-down, bullshit public option is passed, be it a trigger or state-run or co-ops, Republicans will attack it as socialism and government intervention in blah, blah, blah. It could be a slightly lower cost on aspirin, and conservatives will make it seem like Josef Stalin is shooting Grandma and tossing her in a mass grave. That's what August and everything after should have taught us.

So why not just pass the real thing?