Last week, Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., signed a bill to create a state-chartered insurance plan to be sold on the state’s insurance exchange. That makes the Evergreen State the first in the nation to offer a “public option.”

State officials claim the new plan gives consumers one more option on the individual insurance market, one that’s presumably cheaper. But they’ve set the stage for the destruction of the individual market, where the public option ends up as the only option.