Insurance Co.s make case for the public option

So the insurance industry is saying that the Senate healthcare plan would increase premiums. If the industry as a whole is so certain that it's going to raise rates, doesn't this make a pretty good case for an entity outside these companies that will compete with them? That's exactly why we need the public option.

Perhaps it's time to hear Obama and more Democrats saying this.

BTW, the insurance industry bases it's claim that it will need to raise rates on a study it commissioned from the accounting firm of Price-Waterhouse. Rolling Stone reports that P-W made a similar study for the tobacco industry about 15 years ago claiming that high taxes on cigarettes would kill the economy (see http://www.rollingstone.com/nationalaffairs/index.php/2009/10/12/price-waterhouse-and-big-tobacco/). So, unless you believe that bank misadventures, credit-default swaps and the collapse of the real estate market are attributable to tobacco taxes, P-W plausibility doesn't have a lot going for it.