Senator Harry Reid and a private public option

Two things confusing for most people

Here is thing one............
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supports a public health care option

Here is thing two..............

the public option can be contracted to a private company [!]

During a tele-townhall with constituents today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports a public option...but then he added an extremely important caveat. Reid said he doesn't think the public option ought to be a government run program like Medicare, but instead favors a "private entity that has direction from the federal government so people that don't fall within the parameters of being able to get insurance from their employers, they would have a place to go. "
Reid spokesman Jim Manley emails in that Reid's preference is for a "public option," but would not confirm that Reid means "public option" as commonly understood: an insurance program run by the Department of Health and Human Services or another government body.

Manley adds, "The govt could contract with a private company to administer the public option. [Sen. Reid] is willing to consider a co-op if he is shown it works to make insurers honest."

It is a powerful person that can make a public option into private yet still refer to it as public option while simultaneously considering a co-op situation .Amazingly its all done with a straight face .I suspect plenty of smoke and mirrors will ultimately be involved to pull off one of these two things.