Remember the Public Option?

Well, to paraphrase Mark Twain, "The reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated -- at least in California." From Mother Jones (my emphasis):

Consumer Watchdog, a California-based consumer advocacy group, is spearheading a ballot initiative that would create a public option for the state. By introducing a public competitor to the health insurance marketplace, the group argues, private insurance companies would have to lower their own rates. The plan would also roll back insurance rates by 20 percent and exact tougher oversight of premiums. The goal: to get the initiative approved by the state attorney general's office and ready for a vote by the November 2012 election.

Jacob Hacker, the Yale professor who is credited with the idea for the federal public option, says a state-run version could do a lot of good too. "[A] self-insured state plan would have relatively low administrative costs; second, it would not need to earn a profit; third, it could focus on improvements in value that are only possible with a large and relatively stable insured population," Hacker wrote in an email to Mother Jones. Connecticut's SustiNet program, a public-option plan built on existing insurance pools for state and municipal workers, is a good example of how such a plan might work, Hacker says.
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[Consumer Watchdog] plans to spend some $6 million collecting the 700,000 signatures needed to get the public option on the ballot. But it is seriously outgunned: The insurance lobby is ramping up a $100 million campaign to kill the ballot measure.