Friends,

Please forgive me if you are already light years ahead of me on this topic, but I have a few questions for which you might be able to provide some answers.

Question 1: What is the answer to claim that a "public option" would eventually devolve into a government run health care program for all because private health care companies would not be able to compete?  Last night, Sen. Rockefeller was interviewed on NPR about health care coops.  Rockefeller had nothing good to say about coops and he insisted that a public option was the only way forward.  At this point, I was hoping he would be asked about this most frequent objection to a public option, but, alas, I was disappointed.  So, I am hoping that you all can help me out with this.

Question 2: If a single-payer system is politically unworkable (so they say), and, if a public option would eventually devolve into a single-payer system, and so too would be politically unacceptable (so they say), what is the third major option on the table?  It seems that the only real third option that I can find is keeping the status quo.  Is this correct?

Question 3: I thought that one of the biggest selling points of health care reform was decoupling health care expenses from business expenses.  If so, why do current proposals still require businesses to pay three-fourths of an employee's healt care premium?

Any information that would help me understand the answers to these questions, and so also help me better defend health care reform, would be greatly appreciated.

Ta.