this "public option" is a total joke; a travesty actually.
there are so many problems with it that i don't even know where to start.
1) first of all, it's not an "option" - the name itself is completely misleading, because people will not be allowed to opt out of their private insurance (if they're lucky enough to have one)
2) amazingly, it is not even an option for the majority of those who are currently uninsured - they will be *forced* (literally, via mandates) into private plans
3) by 2019 (!), PO (public option) will cover only from 9 to at the most 11 million people; and it will not even kick in until 2013
4) the way it is designed can be best described as "health care apartheid" (i.e., inferior quality healthcare that provides only "essential", extremely limited benefits and the policy that can be - an will be - rejected by providers who chose to opt out of it)
5) extreme marginalization is inevitable (i.e., it will be populated by patients with the most serious illnesses who are considered the worst "rejects" and the worst "money drain" by insurance industry)...
6) such system is almost guaranteed to collapse by design... politically convenient to some ("In time, the public option, weighed down by this tax burden and unable to fully exercise bulk purchasing power, would collapse amidst a fiery congressional storm over the cost of the public option, thus legitimizing arguments that publicly-funded health care is a failed idea."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marcy-winograd/single-payers-crashing-th_b_223656.html )
7) now, insult to injury and an absolute travesty - the "reform" will be funded largely by MASSIVE, unprecedented and atrocious CUTS to Medicare (projected $500 BILLION cuts over the next decade), as well as hundreds of billions of cuts to other few remaining providers of social services, such as hospitals for the poor...
8) and guess what? -- you just can't make this shit up! -- in 2019, according to CBO, 36 million Americans will still be uninsured (as opposed to the current 47 million). i doubt that the CBO has the stats on the projected number of people who will be severely underinsured and/or paying exorbitant amounts of money for their coverage, but it is likely to be dozens of millions.
i'm sure i've missed some points, but the bottomline is that the only winners here are the insurance industry and health "care" corps... at this point, i'm afraid that this monstrosity of a "reform" doesn't even represent a first "little baby step" in the right direction, it actually may be a step backwards, in a wrong direction. :banghead:
</end rant>