The only snag now would be that everyone at a business pays the same rate, regardless of age, but the majority of public option plans, plus the current federal marketplace plans, are age rated. So if your employer paid $500 a month for you, and you're 30, you might be able to get a good public plan for $200 and "pocket the difference", but if youre 60, your cost might be $700 and you lose money. But that can be sorted out .

@MarkiusMahamius If the market were allowed to work in a true capitalist laissez faire manner, then, as private plans lost business to less expensive public option plans (assuming that's the case), then those plans should be forced to reduce cost as well to survive.

I say "should" be forced to reduce cost. More likely by far, they would run to legislators and protest the "unfair" competition and seek propping up from our tax dollars, since they're too big to fail. But in this case, they could fail without harm, since the customer base moving to a public network would mean that the public insurance administration would need more employees to manage it, more jobs to replace those lost in the private industry... in fact the only ones who suffered would be the executives, and I have no problem with that.

@Paul4747 premium to benefit ratio us already highly regulated... that's what bronze silver gold platinum mean. For premiums to go down, insurance companies would have to pay out less...either have a copper plan or some such, or hospitals n drs n big pharma would need to charge less. [healthcare.gov]