Word: opts
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Insurers are furious that Senate majority leader Harry Reid's health-care-reform bill will include a public option - even though it lets states opt out if they don't want the government-run insurance alternative. Liberals are ecstatic with Reid over that same public option - even though opt-out states would be able to keep their markets completely private, which would limit the public plan's power to negotiate volume-based discounts in other states. (Read "Understanding the Health-Care Debate: Your Indispensable Guide...
...impressive bipartisan consensus regarding the power of inertia. For all the disagreements over the public option, almost everyone agrees that making it the default is a big deal, and that the compromise allowing opt-outs is a pretty modest compromise. That's because reams of studies have shown that default settings really, really matter. If Reid's legislation had omitted a default public option but allowed states to opt in if they wanted one, insurers would be ecstatic and liberals would be furious...
...classic example of the power of the default is the opt-out 401(k) savings plan. In a 2001 study, only 36% of the participants signed up for a retirement savings plan when they had to opt in - even though their employers were matching their contributions. Free money, and only 36% took it! But when participants were automatically signed up for the same plan but given the chance to opt out, 86% of them stuck with it. Scholars have found similar status-quo results with organ donations. If we have to sign up, very few of us become organ donors...
...There is, however, one big difference between the Reid legislation and other opt-out strategies: a state is not a person. An individual might end up in a public-health plan out of pure inertia, but it's not clear whether a conservative state like Louisiana would exhibit the same status-quo tendencies. Governor Bobby Jindal is an outspoken opponent of the public option, and an ambitious politician; Louisiana legislators might be eager to distance themselves from President Obama and the Democratic Congress...
...Karadzic's shoes, I would opt for a drastic solution. One such solution is suicide." - Serb Republic President Dragan Cavic in 2004 as authorities were negotiating the surrender of former military chief Ratko Mladic and speculating that Karadzic was hiding in the country. (Time.com, July...