The public option is back, and liberals are celebrating the occasion by passing around a fresh CBO report, drinking deeply from it, and growing intoxicated on its claims that implementing the public option would reduce the deficit by about $53 billion over ten years. In this metaphor, I will play the typical conservative buzzkill, explaining why the public option would give America a massive hangover.

First, most of the deficit reduction — $37 billion — would come straight out of Obamacare’s costs. The CBO estimates that “roughly one-third of the people obtaining [subsidized private] coverage through the insurance exchanges would enroll in the public plan,” because “the public plan’s premiums would be 5 percent to 7 percent lower, on average, than the premiums of [subsidized] private plans offered in the exchanges.”The deficit reduction would come from a reduction in subsidy outlays, meaning that, according to the CBO, the public option would result in slightly less Obamacare spending, not a smaller deficit from a pre-Obamacare baseline.

The public plan is able to undercut private plans because the government is benevolent and private insurance companies are rapacious thieves has the power to force doctors and hospitals to accept lower reimbursement rates than private companies typically pay. It uses this power with Medicare, and it plans to use this power with the public option:

The plan’s payment rates for physicians and other practitioners would be based on Medicare’s current rates but would not be subject to the future reductions required by Medicare’s sustainable growth rate formula [n.b. neither will Medicare]; instead, those rates would initially increase by 5 percent and then would rise annually to reflect estimated increases in physicians’ costs. The plan would pay hospitals and other providers the same amounts that would be paid under Medicare, on average, and would establish payment rates for prescription drugs through negotiation. Health care providers would not be required to participate in the public plan in order to participate in Medicare.

Buzzkill one: Forcing doctors to accept below-market rates would have consequences. It worked with Medicare for a long time, because many doctors could not afford to opt out of Medicare. But increasing numbers are, and the number of doctors opting out of Medicaid is increasing, too. Are lots of doctors going to be eager to opt into a public plan that pays them less than private alternatives and doesn’t even cover that many people, relatively speaking? Doubt it.

The CBO also estimates a $27 billion increase in tax revenues “that would result because a greater share of employees’ compensation would take the form of taxable wages and salaries (rather than nontaxable health benefits).”

Buzzkill two: Here’s what that means translated into English: Employers would dump their employees onto government exchanges and (presumably) increase their employees’ taxable wages as they phased out their health-insurance plans. I am personally in favor of moving in the direction of individual coverage over employer-provided care, but I think there are better mechanisms to effectuate the change. That said, the public option would, according to the CBO, do even more damage to Obama’s already-tattered promise that you can keep the plan you have if you like it.

The Cato Institute’s Michael Cannon gets this exactly right: “When costs explode under ObamaCare the way they are exploding under RomneyCare, expect the public option to be the Left’s go-to solution.” But would the public option solve the problem of exploding costs? Of course not. Doctors would be under no obligation to treat patients covered by the public plan, and we have strong reasons to believe they would choose not to be underpaid to cover such a small percentage of the public. The only real cost control is consumer choice. The public option would move us further from, not closer to, a system in which choice is the organizing principle.