Trigger

The real head-scratcher for serious media-watchers right now is what the "war" between the White House and Fox News was meant to distract us from this week. The "war" itself is laughable, for a number of reasons.

In a breakthough in Senate negotiations around a public health insurance option, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) sat down with centrist conservative Demo...

Obama should be worrying less about Reid's arithmetic and more about losing some progressive senators who may not pass a plan that includes the trigger provision.

Senate Democrats emerged from a caucus-wide meeting Wednesday evening tight-lipped about the elements of the "broad agreement" that has been reached o...

Forty-eight hours ago, Snowe could have extracted almost anything from the Democratic leadership. Then 24 hours ago, Snowe became irrelevant -- and two hours ago, Lieberman seized his opportunity.

The plan isn't going into effect until 2013. Think you're tired of TV ads and screaming folks at town hall meetings now? Picture a more local version of that for the next four years -- not a pretty sight.

According to NBC News Washington Bureau Chief Mark Whitaker, some in the White House -- and on Capitol Hill -- think a 'triggered' public option is pr...

President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as p...

There's a million ways to rig the Medicare system so that nothing ever gets triggered. In fact, that's the whole point of the trigger. Anyone who advocates otherwise is a liar.

Obama's first year has not been full of good signs. He got a few things done while clearly leaning on the wrong side on the most important issues. But it's nowhere near too late.

Once again, Howard Dean is right and Rahm Emanuel is wrong. What Emanuel doesn't seem to get is that real change is realistic.

The progressives and Blue Dogs are going to have a showdown. It is going to culminate not in statements to the press (or the lack thereof), not in some whispered whip count, but rather in a very public vote.

A worried Senator called me last night to tell me they were extremely nervous that the White House was on the verge cutting a deal with Olympia Snowe on her trigger-that's-not-a-trigger amendment.

Amid fresh signs that the White House is preparing to back a scaled-down health care overhaul that would only include a public insurance option as a f...

Obama absolutely loves the phrase "everything's on the table." But the time for piling "everything" on "the table" is over. Everything being on the table means that no decisions have been made.

Gibbs seemed to hint at a new twist in the debate over whether a government-operated health insurance program will be one of the options available in health reform legislation.

Obama again refused to give a strong defense of the public option himself. By doing so, he just dug the hole deeper. What exactly does Obama stand for in the health care debate?