I am very sorry to say that the public option as written into the bills provided in the Senate and the House are already set up to fail. The reason is simple. To be a self-sustaining system to drive down costs it MUST be able to compete with insurance companies.
The reality of the bills is that these bills are actually written ONLY for the uninsured.
That's right, if you are provided insurance by your employer you WILL BE PREVENTED FROM BUYING INTO THE PUBLIC OPTION.
Here is the CNN piece on the subject.
In addition, now the senate has put an OPT-OUT public option on the bill so that even those uninsured few (estimates are only about 27 million nationwide will be able to buy into the system) that do qualify for the program may not be able to buy in because their state legislators and/or governors refused to offer it to their constituencies.
In other words, the "robust" public option is only for those people who are not currently part of the health insurance customer base. AND it will provide stiff penalties for those who do not get insurance SO it is bound to INCREASE revenue for the insurance companies, making their collective customer base GROW, making THEM bigger and less likely to have to reduce their costs BECAUSE THE PUBLIC OPTION DOES NOT OFFER REAL COMPETITION TO THE INSURANCE COMPANIES.
in other words, my dear kossacks
85% of you reading this won't be able to buy into the public option.
update>
me and rachel maddow have a lot in common on this, didn't see this until after the post.
http://rawstory.com/...
The opt-out clause now included in the Senate's version of health care reform could cause the entire public option to fail, because it would reduce its ability to keep costs down, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow told viewers Monday night.
Because the version of public health care currently being proposed would cover only the uninsured, and only in places where state legislatures don't opt out of it, the public health insurance plan may not have enough participants to successfully reduce health care costs, Maddow explained.