A FINAL CLARIFICATION. The Obama folks called back to further clarify their position on the Health Insurance Exchange Markets. Larger businesses could, if they chose, put their employees into the exchange market, at which point the employees would be able to pick from the menu of private and public options offered therein. There wouldn't be incentives to do this, but if a company so chose, they could sign up with the exchange market on a risk-adjusted basis (risk-adjusted because you don't just want companies with older, sicker workforces taking advantage of the system). That's significantly better than barring larger companies from using the public options, though somewhat less audacious than the Edwards' plan, which actually encourages companies to switch over to the public option. To make this discussion somewhat more explicit, Obama's plan has a public option, but is not a backdoor approach to single-payer. --Ezra Klein
