The basic fact when considering an alternative to private insurers is that any plan that does not devote a portion of the premium to profit will necessarily be cheaper. This applies both to the PO as much as to the single payer plan. Public plans have a comparative advantage with respect to the price of premiums over private for profit plans. Everything follows from this fact.

An as yet missing piece of information is when does a plan to manage risk become viable. That is, what element of a plan to manage the cost of a risk allows for the price of the premium to fall. Presumably this happens when the aggregate cost of the risk decreases as the number of participants in the plan increases. But this can only happen when some proportion of the participants with low risk associated cost is reached relative to those participants with high risk associated costs.

If this is correct than it doesn’t matter what the total number of participants in the plan is. What matters in attaining the lowest premiums, is the proportion of low risk low cost participants relative to high risk high cost participants. This will be true if the number of participants is 47million, as those eligible for the PO, or 300 plus million participants as would be available for the single payer plan.

In this regard it bears re-emphasizing that premiums will always be lower in a publicly administered plan than in a for profit managed plan, because the public plan is more efficient, that is, paying a bill is done more efficiently by single entity (think Medicare) than by 1,300 entities paying that same type of bill but retaining a portion of it for themselves.

Of course there is very strong need for clarifying with readily available calculations the benefits related to cost of premiums that public plans offer. It makes arguing for it so much easier.

it’s expensive, but for someone like me (cancer survivor and sometimes life threatening illness) it’s a life saver because at least i can get insurance.

there must be some kind of cost controls though (even if completely ineffective), because there is a ton of pressure on docs to see lots of patients in as little time as possible. also where i live there are long wait times for new patients, especially for specialists but also even for pcps.

they always fold

it is their nature to fold

actually they must fold to get lobbyist money for next election

but before they fold they must look like they are representing their voters

it works every time like a charm

demos sign up as an independent and form a voting block like the blacks and latinos have

your party no longer represents you

the repubs are planning to have a total have more society with them in control of the have nots

ie reagan economics

Massachussetts has a mandate without any (wait a second, that’s not strong enough) any cost controls in place. No competition to speak of, no regulation worth mentioning.

If you want to know what we’re going to look like under MaxCare, look at Massachussetts. It isn’t pretty. It might be prettier than Texas, but that’s akin to saying that a Twinkie is better for you than a deep-fried Twinkie.

We forget that when our oil companies were taking other countries oil and giving them squat for it, they did what was right for their countries and nationalized their oil businees throwing out or controling our oil companies. They did what was right.

We didn’t call them communists or socialists and are still buying their oil, and calling them our friends today.

You see nationalizing the Insurance Industry is the smartest bet, we get their people, their systems, and the whole set up already there. The Government doesn’t have to create new agencies, hire new people, or start something from scratch. The people now insured thorugh them would be paying their premiums to the Government. The government wouldn’t be paying the people they pay to not give us care, for the add campaigns, marketing, and all the stuff that they spend on that isn’t healthcare. If the companies stayed seperate we would still have choice in the plans of the different companies. Even though they all were owned by the Government. They wouldn’t have to keep us and the Government at the mercy of the Insurance Barons. The profits would now be Government surpluses, and could be used to help insure the uninsured. The government wouldn’t be at the mercy of Wall Street, and the investors. It wouldn’t be looking at spending tax money. or taxing us more to provide care. It could set the rates, bargin for care, and control, what going on.

What it wanted to do with the present owners and investors is up to it. It could offer them a one time buy out, and say bye bye. Even that would be way better than to let them keep raping the country and people for profits on our sickness.

You see the retards we have elected to our Government don’t have the smarts to do this. They instead want to break the country, tax us more, fine us, and saddle our businesses with more problems providing care.

Their excuse is our free market, capitalistic, robber baron system we have, shouldn’t be tampered with. This is more important than the nations health, wealth, prosperity, and future. It’s more important to let the big Corporations, Wall Street, and all the big interests to continue ripping us off.

Our second public option is one we all know, throw all the bums out, retake our Government, and not replace the retards, with more retards.
Neither party is exempt. We all need to relize that our Congress set up the Insurance based system we enjoy. They promoted it, defended it, and are trying to give all of us to it.

The congress has created every problem this Country has, incuding the housing and banking crisis’s by their actions or inactions, and not fixed one. These are the people we are looking to hoping to fix the healthcare problem. They bailed out the banks, haven’t re-regulated, funded the wars, spent and are still spending us into debt, haven’t fixed Medicare Social security, and have saddled us and our kids with all these problems in Years to come. All while taking every dollar they can from every special interest, selling us out for those dollars, while we pay their salaries.

Oh yes! Our wonderful America in action.

I think, especially in a democracy, the public is essential. So then the just and smart thing to do is to keep every American alive and well. And which one of us will be the next Franklin, Jefferson, Miles? We won’t know if they are dead.

Interesting! We should unashamedly shame the SOB with his own mother. I’m just low enough to go there.

It would seem then that if a strong public option were passed…

As soon as you can point to the legislation that defines a ‘strong public option,’ I’ll agree with you and work for it.

The left should start throwing [Obama's] mother’s travails back into his face at every opportunity.

Fuck Yeah! I’ve been waiting for someone to say exactly that…

What would a woman who worked her ass off for microfinance think of her son, the Prez, blatantly selling out working people to this catastrophe masquerading as reform?