Thaler on the Public Option

Here is Richard Thaler on the public option in the healthcare debate. He ends up about where I am on this topic, but I think he is a bit too quick to "assume that the public option does have to break even and can’t make any special deals." I believe that many advocates and many opponents of the public option are making the opposite assumption and, as a result, see the public option as a route toward a single-payer system. (They disagree, however, about whether that is good or bad.) That implicit assumption is why the public option is a bigger issue in this debate than Thaler would have us believe.