Word: optional
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...Public Plan. Yes, the House version has a government-run option, which Democrats say would be crucial to holding down costs and to provide competition that would, in President Barack Obama's words, "keep insurance companies honest," but which Republicans say would be a deal-breaker. Still, the House model appears to be far weaker than one described in early drafts of the HELP Committee's legislation. If those early drafts are any indication, the HELP version would look a lot like Medicare, with the rates that it reimburses hospitals, doctors and other health-care providers linked to those paid...
...House version, on the other hand, would have a government plan that looks a lot like a private insurance company. "The public health insurance option is self-sustaining and competes on 'level field' with private insurers," according to the document released by the three committee chairmen...
That's a very big difference. Where the insurance industry says that it would go broke if it had to compete with a Medicare-like option, some of the big companies say privately they could live with a government plan, if it had to sustain itself (as they do) on the premiums they collect, and if it is subject to the same regulatory rules that they are. Similarly, the weaker House version would not run into as much opposition from hospitals and doctors, who don't want yet another government plan squeezing them the way that Medicare does. However, that...
...nation already deeply in debt afford health-care reform too? This question has not gotten nearly the amount of discussion that the public option has, but it's likely to be far more difficult to resolve. That's because under the budget rules, any plan that Congress passes will have to pay for itself within 11 years without adding to the deficit. Passing muster with government bean counters is not the same thing as writing sound health-care policy. While many health-care-reform moves promise big savings in the future for the larger economy, they will require huge...
...rather than respect it. But the world hasn't learned. When I was liberated in 1945, April 11, by the American army, somehow many of us were convinced that at least one lesson will have been learned - that never again will there be war; that hatred is not an option, that racism is stupid; and the will to conquer other people's minds or territories or aspirations, that will is meaningless. I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture...