Word: plan
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...Meanwhile, the White House Monday sought to tamp down reports that it has misgivings about Reid's plan to bring a public option to the floor, which may well cause the only Republican who might vote for reform, Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, to vote with her party. Presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement declaring that President Obama is 'pleased that the Senate has decided to include a public option for health coverage, in this case with an allowance for states to opt out. As he said to Congress and the nation in September, he supports the public option...
...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...
...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...
...somehow managed to develop into a serious, capable young adult even as many of his siblings appeared to have suffered from one kind or another of personality disorder related to their extreme upbringing. One day while sitting together on the bin Laden mountain, Osama revealed to Omar his plan to destroy the U.S. from within by making it bleed through constant war until Muslims ruled the world. But Omar wasn't interested. "I sat mute, feeling not one jolt of passion for my father's life," he writes. "I only wanted him to be like other fathers, concerned with...