[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Bond

I'm going to try a new tactic, since nothing else has been effective.

Ok

Who pays for the public option?

You do know that the premiums paid by citizens who choose to opt-in will not be enough to cover the entire cost of the program, correct?

Initially it will not be enough to cover the costs, you're right. Tax dollars will give birth to this program.

If it becomes the standard type of healthcare for the country and private insurance is pushed into being something for the wealthy.. then it will eventually get to the point where it pays for itself. Though it will pay for itself without pushing for making a profit, and without dealing with as much upper management as private health insurance has. Which will keep the costs at a lower then average rate (in theory).

Now, if it fails to become the standard, and private health insurance companies find a way to keep their price and quality comparable.. then the public option will be pushed into a corner and would be like Prof S's "Catastrophic Care" which will only deal with cases private insurance reasonably would not want to handle. If this happens, tax dollars will continue to pay for it, but it would still address issues that people have with the healthcare system as-is.

I would not mind either result.

The biggest fear I have about the public option, however, is that the governemnt will not play fair with it and continue to push private health insurance into failure by directly making changes in laws that make it impossible for them to compete. As long as the public option remains an OPTION, its win win.

As you (and prof) mentioned earlier in the thread, loosening up regulations on private health insurance would do some good. However I don't feel that it would help without the public option playing some role in it. My problem with a "Catastrophic Care" type thing is that there's no potential for it to pay for itself whatsoever. If the public option morphs into that, we can at lest say we tried to save government money.

Do you believe a public option would truly be deficit-neutral as President Obama claims it would be? Reference this article from the WSJ citing the CBO's (which is non-partisan) findings:

That would depend completly on how sucsessfull the program is as I stated above. Of course to start, it will not be deficit-neutral. Anyone with common sense knows that it will take money to get this thing rolling. As for the projection in the article, that would be unfortunate, but I think that it would be reasonable. It doesn't specify how much per year it would be exactly, because the truth is nobody knows. But it's a safe assumption that it will start off high then lower over time... but it depends on too many factors.