On Public Option

First, what is the public option? It's an insurance policy funded and managed by the government. That is all... nothing more, nothing less. Here's an article describing how it came about. Chris Hayes of The Nation does a good job of explaining it for the lay man in the video below. Keep reading for more on the controversy started last weekend over it.

Second, why has it been in the news so much?

A week ago, both Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius and president Barack Obama stated in different places and times that the public option was not essential to the healthcare reform bill, that it was not an integral part of it, thus signaling their willingness to drop it from the proposal.

Outrage and speculation ensued, and rightfully so, over the importance of the so-called public option and the futility of a healthcare reform bill without it. Howard Dean was one of the first and most vocal supporters of the public option, claiming that a healthcare reform bill without it was no reform at all. At the same time, the Obama White House started to juggle with the idea of non-profit co-ops, which would bring the government and private insurance companies together in providing healthcare subsidized by the government and with no profit for the partaking private insurance. Needless to say, people discussed that option, as well, with some experts saying that the measure has a 'checkered history.'

The administration's statements on dropping the public option from the healthcare reform bill drew ire from the more liberal factions of the political spectrum: The Nation had an article calling a healthcare reform bill without a public option 'a squandered opportunity,' and another article analyzing the public option more in depth, while many progressive groups made it clear they would not give up on it. The more liberal Democrats in Congress, for their part, vowed the same, as the NPR report below shows, though Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com added that they might 'cave' and vote for a bill that has other perks, if not public option.

As the week progressed, Democrats seemed more supportive of public option and more united behind it. And, as of late this week, both Sebelius and Obama had all but recanted their statements. In the immediate aftermath of their announcement last weekend, White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, dismissed rumors that the public option was dead, prompting Paul Krugman to write an op-ed in The New York Times restating the importance of the public option from an economic perspective. Most recently at Ohio State University, Sebelius stated she supported a state-run health insurance.