Furthermore, the public option is entirely separate from the Exchange. Either could exist in the absence of the other.

Yes, a public option could be farmed-out to a private firm to run or it could be run by a government entity (as the Rockefeller bill would establish).

There are options within the concept of a ‘public option’.

HCAN: A public health insurance option doesn’t have to be a government entity necessarily.

CPC: A robust public option must…Consist of one entity, operated by the federal government, which sets policies and bears the risk for paying medical claims to keep administrative costs low and provide a higher standard of care…. Utilize the existing infrastructure of successful public programs like Medicare in order to maintain transparency and consumer protections for administering processes including payment systems, claims and appeals.

This distinction is critical to ensuring that the public option does not add an entirely new bureaucracy, which if nongovernmental would actually constitute a new, albeit nonprofit, insurance company, rather than a far more efficient (and potentially more single-payer-ready) adaptation of existing government infrastructures. Note that either way, the public option will already require the creation of a new, wasteful infrastructure in the form of the “exchange.”

I want to see the entire 80-member CPC pledge to vote against any public option that fails to live up to the CPC principles. Since Reps Grijalva, Ellison, and Woolsey are in the leadership of CPC’s health reform efforts, I want to make sure they sign on not just to the HCAN principles, which set a low bar, but to the CPC principles that they themselves helped promulgate.

How many others are getting this reaction?