/biz/ - Business & Finance

Can someone explain how options work to me? I think I'm missing something blinding obvious.
Right now, let's use GALT since it's being shilled right now.

At the bottom, there's a strike price of $1, meaning that I would buy the shares at one dollar a piece, of what I'm assuming is the standard 100 set of shares. And it says the premium is $4.50.
There is another selection there which has the strike price of $8, to use the other extreme here, and the premium price is $0.13

1. Is the premium price is per singular share?
2. Either way, what possible reason would I want to have a higher strike price? This feels like something -really- obvious that I'm just completely blind to.
I hope I'm getting my question across properly.