I don't think the Health Insurance Reform Act was a great progressive achievement.

[Bob Wallace]

179. Under the new health care legislation, the PPACA...

insurance companies cannot increase their profits by denying care. Pure and simple.

We will also have new avenues for contesting any denial of care.

Now, have you ever dealt with a non-responsive governmental agency? I certainly have. There's nothing magic about the public sector that makes them superior to a private company that needs to provide good customer service to stay in business.

UPS gives me on line tracking for every package I ship, the USPS does not even though they have a tracking system in place. I can't even go to the Post Office and get them to track a package unless it's long overdue.

Private - public, there's not clear "best solution" that I see. A public option would have somewhat lower overhead but the government might not be as aggressive about finding better ways to manage costs and might not work as hard to keep consumers happy.

I kind of like this model of putting a bunch of private providers in open competition in which they will make their profits off the number of customers they can attract as opposed to the old model of serving only the least sick and then minimizing services. And I've worked in government enough to realize that there are a lot of government employees who are just putting in their time and under little pressure to do a better job.

My recommendation is that we give this system a try and then adjust it as necessary as we go along.