Public Option Now!

In a polity as unwieldy and heterogeneous as ours, attaining 70 percent public approval for any policy is a minor miracle. Doubly so when it's a fairly esoteric provision of healthcare reform and, crucially, when it involves vital progressive policy. Yet in the past few weeks, three successive national polls have shown that roughly 70 percent of respondents favor a Medicare-style public plan as part of healthcare reform.

It makes sense. Almost every American knows someone who uses Medicare, and the satisfaction with that program is famously high. From a policy perspective, a public option would serve an essential purpose: if it performed with the efficiency and cost control of Medicare, it would impose discipline on private insurers through competition. In other words, it would set a kind of baseline of care by giving people a choice.

Most Democrats in the House and Senate seem to be on board, as is President Obama, who not only campaigned on a public option but took quite a bit of time to make the case for it during a recent White House midday press conference and later ABC prime-time town hall meeting. "If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality healthcare, if they tell us that they're offering a good deal," he said during the press conference, "then why is it that the government--which they say can't run anything--suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical."

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