Word: optionally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...early response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the state, which created a special program to help people awaiting buyouts make a down payment on another home. Residents are also thankful for the hard labor of countless volunteers. And in March, Cedar Rapids voters approved a local-option sales tax expected to produce $17 million a year to be used for buyouts. But the city's plan to improve flood protection, redevelop the riverfront and rebuild public facilities remains a concern for some. It includes buying out flood-damaged homes in the flood plain to make...
...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...
...moment, even public plan options that don't potentially undercut private insurers lack traction with Senate Republicans, which is why Democratic Senator Kent Conrad over the weekend proposed the creation of "consumer health cooperatives." The idea, in essence, is to create a public option that isn't technically public at all; according to a one-page Conrad proposal circulating this week, state or regional nonprofit cooperatives would be created by federal charter and be member-owned and operated by boards of directors. The co-ops would operate by the rules of the insurance exchange and be capitalized by initial federal...