“Public option”: kept alive by health control bill?

by Brian T. Schwartz | 7:45 am, May 19, 2010 | Comments Off

[Post updated in response to Max's comment. Thanks!]
The San Francisco Examiner reports:

Remember when Obama and congressional Democrats made a big show of dropping the public option government insurance program that was supposedly going to give private insurers competition and drive rates down? The truth is the public option is alive and well, residing in Section 1334, pages 97-100, of the new health care law. That section gives the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — which presently manages the federal civil service — new responsibilities: establishing and running two entirely new government health insurance programs to compete directly with private insurance companies in every state with coverage for people outside of government.

I have not substantiated the claims I quoted in the above Examiner article.  The editors appear to draw on this publication from the Heritage Foundation: The Office of Personnel Management: A Power Player in America’s Health Insurance Markets? The abstract states:

On Christmas Eve 2009, the U.S. Senate passed a mammoth health care bill [HR 3590] that would dramatically expand the role of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Why should Americans care about this? OPM is the government agency that runs the federal civil service and also administers the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program–and does a decent job at both. But with its new powers, OPM would no longer merely act as referee in the annual competition among private health plans trying to attract federal workers. OPM would become the official sponsor of at least two national health plans (read: public option) that would compete against private plans in every state in the country. The possibility of OPM’s new role opens up a near-endless array of questions and concerns. In a panel discussion on January 20, 2010, hosted by The Heritage Foundation, four health policy experts, including three former OPM directors, address some of them.

I’ll look into this more when I get a chance.

For more of the Barney Frank video, see: Barney Frank: “public option” is “best way to reach single payer”.

Also check out Scott Harrington’s Wall Street Journal article, The ‘Public Plan’ Would Be the Only Plan:It’s impossible for private insurers to ‘compete’ with government.

(Examiner article via FIRM, video via Jon Caldara)

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