Think twice when you hear the words 'public option' health insurance [View all]
By Ed Weisbart, M.D.
St. Louis Post Dispatch, July 5, 2019
Shhh! Dont tell the insurance companies (its a secret).
Thats the logic of the presidential candidates who are pushing a public option, also known as Medicare for Those Who Want It. They claim that adding a Medicare-like option onto the health insurance marketplace is an easier political lift than real Medicare for All, and that such an option would thrive in the free market and open the door for Medicare for All. Then the insurance industry would admit defeat and quietly ride off into the sunset, finally achieving what should have been done in the first place.
The fact that the insurance industry is lobbying hard for this circuitous incremental approach should tell you all you need to know.
Sadly, many of us dont understand the choice were being offered. That helps them sell the idea that having more options is always better. Its true that we need free choice of doctors and hospitals, but insurance should disappear into the background. Thats what would happen with Medicare for All; thats not what would happen with a public option, and the difference is all-important.
We could spend the next few years passing a public option and then wait several more years to see how it works. Ten years later, we would still be playing catch-up with the rest of the industrialized world, where health care costs half of what it does here in America and yet produces dramatically better results.
Why isnt a public option good enough?
First, its missing nearly all the savings of a single-payer system. Health care insurance companies operate at 15% to 20% overhead; Medicares overhead is 2%. We will never reach Medicares efficiency by keeping todays complex insurance industry in the mix. Never. Plus, the insurance companies inefficiency as high as it is is dwarfed by the untold time and money patients, doctors and hospitals waste in dealing with those companies.
https://pnhp.org/news/think-twice-when-you-hear-the-words-public-option-health-insurance/