figuring out new creative ways to deny these sick people medical coverage.

It’s going to happen, PO or no. So where to they go if there isn’t one?

Put crudely, the public option in its current form would vacuum up the chronically ill and thus spare the insurance industry not only the expense of paying for their care but also the administrative costs of figuring out new creative ways to deny these sick people medical coverage.

According to the CBO, the planned “insurance exchanges” thus would give private insurers an estimated 24 million new – and relatively healthy – customers, many with government subsidies that would go directly into the coffers of the insurance industry. Without the public option, the industry might get six million more customers but they would include lots of sick people.

That means the current legislation with a weak public option is a win-win-win for the insurance industry.

Its most lucrative market – large employers providing group benefits for employees – would be protected from competition from the public option; the surviving public option for individuals and small businesses would be barred from achieving savings by tying payments to Medicare rates; and the public option thus would get stuck charging higher premiums than private insurers because it would end up with the sickest part of the population, the CBO says.

So, from the perspective of an insurance executive, what’s not to like?

IT’S A TROJAN HORSE FOR SINGLE PAYER!!!

Weaker than we like? Of course. Possible that it won’t be opened up to everyone for a long time? Sure (fight on Wyden!). But the fact is it’s the first legislation in American history that starts an experiment with single payer and even contains instructions for how the HHS secretary can open it up to everyone.

Wake up people!

If the public option was never about controlling costs or offering competition to the insurance industry in order to make premiums more affordable, why do we need a public option?

Why fight for a public option that is doomed to failure? A public option, that when it dies, conservatives can point at and say see, the govt run program, and those like it sucks?

No amendments.

Advantages: Cost to the American people, zero dollars, zero cents. Bills are short, easy to follow, easy to whip. Completely reverses the political dynamic. Want to protect the right of private insurers to dump sick patients? Harder to do when you can’t blame some culture war distraction. Creates space for Americans to understand what the Hyde amendment was, and for passions to cool. Creates some leverage to finish the work in the near future by providing the most efficient and cost effective method of covering those who remain uninsured having proved change can be profound and fiscally prudent.