Sen. Dodd on Public Health Options

Following Senator Dodd's second stop on the CT Prescriptions for Change Tour in Danbury, we had a chance to ask him where he stands on public health options. Here is what he had to say:

Below is a rough transcript of his response:

Well I'm for them. I think it's very important. I think Chris answered the question better than I did. I just wanted to make the point that--might be both for practical political reasons, but others as well--that there'll be more than just the public option. The question is can we make the public option competitive with the others, and we have to so that people have the marketplace where they can make those choices. And that's where I assume this will probably end up. I'm gonna be an advocate for the public choice because I think it's critically important that people have that choice. I like choices, I like the idea that people do have choices and are not restricted from saying I'm going to have to take this way or the highway in a sense. I think that's where you're gonna probably end up, with something like that, with a phase-in period, subsidies to support people who wanna make choices, that would either wanna stay with their present employer or not. And whether we get to employer mandates or individual mandates, I'm not sure where the place ends up. Some of the words themselves end up having the effect of a Pavlov's dog response, where you say the words and people go 180 degrees in a different direction. So they're very much open ended questions, and those are two of many that we're going to have to grapple with here if we're going to succeed in this.