http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/06/public-option-smokescreens-and-what-you.\
html

EXCERPT:
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I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who
confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their
campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.

You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with
private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with
drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more
people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is
anything that undermines their profits.

So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of
so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to
support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals
is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional
third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A
second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big
Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing
for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers
have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put
competitive pressure on the insurers.
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