Is There An Easy Way To Explain What A Public Option Is?

I've been talking to my Sister about it but judging by our conversations I don't think she really gets it. Keep in mind, my Sister does not follow politics much but National Health care is something I feel she needs to be informed on. I am not very good at explaining what it is. I sent her a link from Google on a plain definition. Has anyone here had to explain what a Public Option is to a loved one or friend?

Public option is an open enrollment Medicare or Medicare-like program which offers health insurance to individuals and companies on a nonprofit basis.


OK, so it's not a terribly accurate description, but it gets the basics across, especially since I don't really know what it will end up looking like. I'm thinking that public option will actually take the form of Medicare access through Humana HMO.

You would essentially have the option of buying into Medicare. Though it would be a program separate from Medicare, it would be run the same way.

The administration's health care approach so far seems to be falling into some classic marketing traps... They are showing a tendency to assign names to concepts before they are fully fleshed out, and the names (like "public option") are technical and structural... not consumer-focused.

As a product manager, I see this happen a lot in companies... Things, products, features, etc. get named prematurely (for convenience sake) and ultimately a time comes when progress is bogged down and people realize that everyone working on a project has different assumptions or internal definitions about what are supposedly to be fundamental concepts.

I think "public option" is meaningless to most citizens... I think Obama should resort to describing health care scenarios or stories that resonate with real people...

A perfect example would be the story of one of the victims in that PA fitness center shooting... She had no insurance because she was off her parents plan and hadn't started college yet... So, her friends held a charity car wash to help her pay her medical bills.

Another example is that heartwarming story of good samaritans who rescued a mother and her kids from a burning overturned SUV... The four year-old was badly burned and the family has no insurance... So, the guys who rescued them from the fire are going above and beyond to help with fundraising to cover medical bills... That's nice of them, but they already pulled the family from the fire... Now they feel obligated to help raise money?!

Not all scenarios need be true-life stories... It should be easy to come up with one or two sentences that describe common situations where people would need a public option.