The Public Option IS the most important part of a health care bill and here is why....

[yourout]

Say you pass a bill that includes everything except a Public Option.

The Insurance Companys would be forced to cover everyone but they can still price fix and jack the rates as much as they please.
Thom Harman has said that there are no laws to prevent collusion on prices as insurance companys are not subject to federal anti-trust laws(McCarran-Ferguson Act). So yes they would have to offer everyone insurance but at rates that would still bankrupt most.

Now if you pass a bill that has nothing but a strong Public Option that covers everyone and everything and is run at a small profit it would force the insurance companys to do the same if they want to stay in business.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. When I asked the British DUers about the NHS versus private

they said that the fact that the presence of the NHS reduces the prices of both private insurance and private medical care. Both the insurance companies and the doctors in private practice know that their patients can always avail themselves of the NHS, so they're careful not to price themselves out of business.

I mean, look at what happens here. What is the point of raising the rates of someone like me 13% per year, someone who has used maybe $800 worth of medical care in the past six years, who has NEVER met her deductible--not when it was $1000, not now when it's $5000?

The insurance company is making money off me like crazy, and they keep raising my rates because THEY CAN.

[sandnsea]

2. Oy. There will be SUBSIDIES

and those subsidies will apply to both the public option and private insurance because there isn't any way in the world that a public option will be affordable to low income waitresses and 7-11 workers either.

If the subsidies get so high that they start to break the back of the taxpayer, then costs will have to come down or we will have to go to a full single payer option.

I can't figure out why anybody believes a public option is going to be the affordable option to low income people. That isn't what is being proposed at all.

[Eric J in MN]

3. If premiums keep going up, then this subject will be re-visited, but...

...the solution Congress passes won't necessarily be single-payer.

Instead, Congress may try to solve that problem by overriding all state insurance regulations.

But if there is already a public option which is widely viewed as successful, then expanding it may be the solution passed by Congress.

[yourout]

4. To that point......I wonder what the real costs of health care are? How big are the profit....

margins in the current system?

I suspect a public option would force insurance company's to become leaner and operate at a 10 to 15 percent margin.

[Davis_X_Machina]

5. A1 10% they'd be 3x *more* inefficient than now. Broken down here...

The insurance industry is not a particularly profitable industry. To be more specific, they're the 86th most profitable industry as measured by profit margins, with an average margin of 3.3 percent. That's lower than drug manufacturers (16.5 percent), health information services (9.3 percent), home health care (8.4 percent), medical labs and research (8.2 percent), medical instruments and supplies (6.8 percent), biotech firms (6.7 percent), generic drug manufacturers (6.6 percent), and much else. That's not to pretend that 3.3 percent is nothing, but it's hard to see how that's a primary driver of health-care spending, much less the growth in health-care spending.

From here, quoted here

[andym]

6. What about capping the premiums and total cost?

Wouldn't that do the trick?

[sandnsea]

10. There are regulations in that direction

They will not be able to charge more than twice the amount based on age, they can't charge based on illness, and they have to distribute a specified percentage of premiums. Those regulations will go a long way to controlling premiums.

[uponit7771]

7. Their stock will tank before then, Wall Street knows that rescission and preconditions outlawed ....

...there's no way the margins of the HCI's will stay where they're at now.

[w4rma]

8. Yup. No public option means a huge windwall for big insurance and entrapped Americans. (nt)

[Doctor_J]

9. Ys, and we're not going to get one

screwn