Public option revived: state-run insurance.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Health insurance - Brief article

In September 2009 President Obama pitched the Affordable Care Act to the nation by lamenting that "in 34 states, 75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company." The result, he said, was more expensive insurance and lower-quality coverage; Obamacare would solve this problem by creating insurance exchanges that would be attractive to insurers, thus giving people more options.

In 2016, Obamacare is the law of the land, and in several exchanges, the number of insurers is dwindling. In April, after months of warnings, UnitedHealth, the nation's largest health insurer, announced it would pull out of most of the state exchanges where it had been operating. Weeks later, Humana announced it was quitting the exchanges in Alabama and Virginia.

Consequendy, a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that some 650 rural counties in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arizona, Oklahoma...