Word: publication
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fury it has provoked on both sides of the health-care debate, it's easy to forget that the idea of a public option was something of an afterthought when presidential candidate Barack Obama first designed his health-care-reform plan. It didn't merit so much as a mention in the 3,636-word speech he gave laying out his vision on health care in May 2007, and it rarely came up in the primary and general-election battles that followed...
...public option had been kicking around for a while, however, in policy-wonk circles. Giving the uninsured an opportunity to purchase coverage through a Medicare-like health plan was seen as a useful means of putting competitive pressure on private insurers to provide decent coverage at low prices...
...debate has progressed, the public option has become an ideological flash point, igniting fears on the right that it will be the precursor to a government-run system like Canada's and some European countries'. Which is the same reason that many on the left like the public option so much...
Over the course of the health-care debate, the public option has come to assume many shapes. And as politicians oversell it as either the destruction or the salvation of the American health-care system, they rarely bother to specify which of its many incarnations they are talking about...
...most liberal and far-reaching version, passed by two House committees, would tie the rates the public plan pays health-care providers to what Medicare reimburses. Given that Medicare reimbursement rates can be 30% lower than those paid by private insurers, such a system could be a powerful one at holding down costs and could save the Federal Government $110 billion over 10 years, according to the most recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). (The Federal Government's costs here would primarily be the subsidies it gives low- and middle-income people to help pay their premiums...