in the bill that will promote competition, thus presumably driving rates down? If insurers continue to be exempt from anti-trust rules and there is no public option, do you believe there will be a significant increase in real competition?

Ezra Klein: The public option contained in the House bill, which is a public option that Dean and others would accept, would not have controlled costs. CBO estimates, in fact, that its premiums would be slightly higher than comparable private plans (though they also said the public option would have delivered slightly better services).

I don't know another way to say this than to say it clearly: The idea that the exchange-limited, non-Medicare public option was the central cost control mechanism in this bill was never credible. It was good policy, and I would have liked to see it in the bill. But the effort to secure it by pretending that it was somehow transformative ended up misinforming a lot of people about the nature of both the option and the larger bill.

Is it my imagination, or did Klein completely fail to address Lexington KY's question? Just answer the question, Mr Klein. Merely claiming the public option was inferior to the one under discussion, while implying that you're having immense difficulty putting it more plainly(!), as if it's the readers fault is a sick joke in itself.

Ezra Klein: 'If insurance is not affordable under the mandate, the mandate will be revoked or stronger cost controls will be added. But here's one cost control in the bill: if an insurer jacks up his rates, he can be decertified from the exchange. That is to say, an insurer who raises prices beyond what's reasonable would lose access to the market. That's a stronger cost control than anything we have now. So too is the excise tax, which slaps on a 40 percent tax if insurers let their costs rise above a certain level, and that level grows more slowly than cost increases do.

Kind of running repairs? On what basis, pray, has the public reason to trust that the word, 'reasonable', will be appropriately construed, by whom it will be construed and with what degree of urgency? That last word is of signal importance. Many Americans would not be in a position to tolerate an indeterminate period of 'commissioning', particularly since it would perforce be required on a permanent basis, since, in the US (and the UK, for that matter), insurance companies have historically been, when not wholly derelict, i.e. in the case of poor claimants, unlikely to be able to afford the kind of legal representation to take the behemoths on, and win. A specially-designated category, I understand, with its own cute, special little denomination in insurance jargon.

It all begs the question: what is the rationale underlying the Administration's tenderness and delicacy when it comes to imposing rigorous rules on the insurance companies from the start; thereby obviating all that nonsense about commissioning/running repairs.

Neoliberalism has been absolutely exposed as insanity, and/or criminal fraud, and yet still this persistent need to treat Big Business with kid gloves, as 'the goose that lays the golden eggs', instead of respecting Adam Smith's precepts, to the effect that its principals should be treated as untrustworthy and seditious in relation to the public good, and absolutely necessitating very purposeful controls on the part of government.