Word: optional
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...leaders of the Republican Party, a public health-care-insurance option is a "non-starter," the first step on a slippery slope to socialized medicine; in the eyes of the American Medical Association (AMA), it could "restrict patient choice"; while for President Barack Obama, as he put it on Monday during his speech to the AMA in Chicago, it's an essential part of any health-care-reform package that would "put affordable health care within reach for millions of Americans...
...central idea behind a public plan is that it would provide health insurance for many of the nearly 50 million Americans who are currently uninsured or for those who are unhappy with their private insurance options. In his much anticipated address to the AMA on Monday, Obama stressed that he does not view a public insurance option as a pathway to dismantling the private insurance industry or creating a single-payer government system like the one that exists in Canada...
...more tenable option, at least politically, might be a public plan that operates much like private insurance companies. This kind of plan could be self-sustaining, funded by premiums, and available to consumers via a so-called insurance exchange, a clearinghouse through which Americans could choose from a selection of health-insurance options. (See pictures of the Cleveland Clinic's approach to health care...
...drive down costs is by forcing private insurers to be more transparent. "The public plan will teach the country what this stuff actually costs," says Len Nichols, director of the New America Foundation's Health Policy Program and co-author of a March 2009 proposal for a public-plan option. Nichols says a public plan could provide a "credible benchmark" that consumers could use to measure whether private insurers are offering fair rates...
...interesting aspect of the Iranian case is not just that the mullahs have demonstrated that they no longer place any store on allowing the election of a reform-minded President to satisfy popular discontent. It is that the Chinese option is not open to them. China's long boom has been dependent on its growing integration into the global economy. But so long as Iran maintains its nuclear ambitions, it will always be subject to sanctions from the most developed economies, principally that of the U.S. Without easy access to markets in the outside world, for both imports and exports...