Me likey.

Just think... who would actually OPT out? They would get voted out of office immediately once people see what the other states are getting.

One could opt out of the stimulus too - that didn't happen.

I'd... actually be okay with this. I actually rather like this. Actually this was something I was wishing was possible at one point, but didn't bring it up because I thought it would never actually go into consideration :P

The important thing is whether the public option has the ability to take root. If it can establish itself, it will grow. If you limit the number of initial enrollees, or even only make it available in certain areas at first, you're still leaving it room to expand later-- and if it works, it surely will. The problem with things like triggers or state coops is they deny the public option even a starting point, they cut off the long-term path to an eventual healthy, universally available public option, the kind of thing that would be capable of serving as the basis for a single payer system.

And if you think about it this would actually be electoral gold for Democrats. The Jindals and Sanfords would all insist on banning the public option from their states to burnish their conservative creds. This would then immediately give the democrats in those states an opening to start working on taking those state governments over, pointing out to conservative moderates, look, all the other states have access to this great insurance option that we don't just because the Republican Party is run by extremists...

Senate Democrats have begun discussions on a compromise approach to health care reform that would establish a robust, national public option for insurance coverage but give individual states the right to opt out of the program.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/dems-discussing-public-op_n_313054.html

The key is "robust", any other plan seems to have a weak public option or a POINO (Public Option In Name Only). This is the first one that seems to have a "robust public option". How many States would really opt out? According to the HuffPo article it would be by State Legislature vote or by referendum. As we've seen with the stimulus money, even states with a Republican majority legislature isn't nearly as ideologically opposed to what nationally seem to be Democrat ideas. Similarly, would folks really vote in a referendum against something that would lower their healthcare costs just because it's "big government"? How many Republicans would vote their ideology over their pocketbook?

Basically there would be maybe five States that would opt out and as long as Texas wasn't one of them, the rest would be too small to really matter. 45 States with a robust public option is mighty appealing. (Of course only as a compromise if a 50-State no-opt out robust public option couldn't be passed)

Would there be an opt back in clause? You'd have to imagine that once the clowns who opted out were booted out of office that States might want back in.

The House Education and Labor Committee passed an amendment by Dennis Kucinich to HR 3200 that would grant individual states a waiver to allow them to opt out of Obamacare and set up their own individual single-payer systems. States that want their own SP systems, including California, where SP bills pass the legislature twice, only to be vetoed by the governor, need such a waiver to get around provisions in ERISA.

For this provision to become law, it needs to survive the reconciliation of the three versions of HR 3200 by House leadership, and then survive House/Senate conference.

I am ALL FOR letting states desiring to opt out of a public option do so, IF the single-payer waiver is also allowed. It's only right that if we grant states the right to choose a system weaker than Obamacare they also have the right to choose something stronger.

This actually sounds good to me. Let the states that are run by wackjobs opt out. I'm sorry that this will cause people in those states not to benefit like the rest of us will, but if the other option is that no one benefits, hey.

Also, it may lead to a decrease in wackjob-run states.

Senators and Congressmen from those States that want to opt back in after opting out should have to prostrate themselves before a graven image of FDR.

I like it. I like it a lot. All part of that "choice" think Dean kept saying was the "genius" of the way they were doing it htis time.

But I have a compromise to offer as between those who want to make it easy to opt back in and those who want to make it hard: make it easy for any state that opts out opt back in except for Texas and South Carolina.

this is a great Idea.

This i can cosign to, if republicans dont want it they can fuck off and the rest of us sane people can have a public option

"objected to versions of the public option which they say could be harmful to their home states." read this to mean blue cross/blue shield in north dakota and conrad's sugar daddy.

Fine, let them opt out. By the following election, many red states will be blue.

Or, maybe we just mean that the United States of America are going to
institue a public option, unless they don't want to.

A sternly worded letter will be coming in the mail.

Best compromise I've heard so far.

I can envision states with already tight job markets that opt in being swamped by "health refugees" from opt out states.

People who can't move will continue to die.

The will of the people can mean nothing in the face of these corporations, and some of the ignorant yahoos who compose some state legilatures.

The health care debate is a fiasco.

Many people don't want health care and the rest should pay for their own. Under what "Moral Authority" must I pay for another person's health care?

Comments welcome.

"Many people don't want health care and the rest should pay for their own. Under what "Moral Authority" must I pay for another person's health care?"

If you pay for health insurance now, you're paying for other people's care, dumbass.