The New York Times reported today that Senate Democratic leaders and the White House are still playing footsie with Maine’s Senate delegation on health care, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Office of Health Reform, confirmed this today.

We don’t really know what Collins would bring to the debate. She hasn’t made any serious statements about health care other than meaningless platitudes like this:

“I have ruled out voting for this bill, but I still very much want to vote for a bill and that is why I am continuing to have discussions,” Ms. Collins said. “I still cling to the belief that it is possible for a group of us to come together and rewrite the bill in a way that would cause it to have greater support.”

Elsewhere, Collins has talked about lowering health care costs. The current bill reduces the deficit by $130 billion in the first ten years. Collins has also said she wouldn’t want to drastically cut Medicare spending, which… lowers costs, at least to the federal government. So she has almost no coherent view on the subject.

Snowe has made her intentions known on this clear: she wants triggers. A lot of her other views – weakening the individual mandate, the “free-rider” provision for employers, lowering the actuarial value of health insurance – are already in the bill. And the Senate leadership has begun once again to warm to the trigger concept:

Snowe favors creating a public option only if private insurers aren’t offering enough affordable policies.

On “Meet the Press,” Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, said the public option is negotiable. “There are many variations on the theme,” he said.

Of course, the leadership risks losing votes on their left if they move too far to placate Snowe.